It was announced earlier today that that BuddyPress 1.5.5 is now available for download. This is considered a maintenance release which addresses 14 issues, some of which are security related. Congrats to the team and I hope you had a blast at WordCamp Netherlands Paul Gibbs.
Shopp Releases Version 1.2 Of Their E-Commerce Plugin
Ingenesis has announced the release of version 1.2 of their commercial e-commerce plugin. 1.2 is being considered a major upgrade as the release contains around 1,000 revisions with 300 bug tickets being squashed. Because of the amount of changes involved between 1.1 and 1.2, they are advising that you take all the precautions necessary before upgrading such as backing up your website data. Thankfully, the guys have created a best practices guide for upgrading as well as a list of template changes.
Haven spoken to John Dillick, Jonathan Davis and some other members of the Shopp team in person on numerous occasions, I can assure you that they take great pride in trying to produce the best shopping cart experience for WordPress. Congrats to the team on your 1.2 release.
WordPress 3.3.1 Fixes Security Exploit
WordPress 3.3.1 was released last night and it addresses an important security issue discovered in WordPress 3.3. Along with the security fix, the release also fixes 15 issues that are outlined here. After I upgraded the Tavern website, I was a bit confused to see a number of things that were listed under the What’s New section. Most of the features outlined were introduced in WordPress 3.3, not 3.3.1.
When questioning this move on Twitter, Evansolomon responded with the following:
evansolomon @wptavern Full feature list is more useful for anyone using < 3.3. As 3.3 is still very new, good case that less accurate = more useful here
I guess that makes sense but it still throws me for a loop a little bit because it looks like those features were added with 3.3.1, not with 3.3. So the question I have for you is, do you think the What’s New section should be strict in only listing what’s new with that specific version or should other features from previous versions be shown as well?
Merry Christmas: WordPress 3.3. Released
The time has finally arrived. WordPress 3.3. was released early this morning to the masses. Codenamed ‘Sonny’ which at a glance looks like sorry, 3.3 has a couple of great user oriented features with a ton of polish. While my WordPress upgrade experience went smoothly, I was immediately impressed with the welcome screen which in my opinion, is better at explaining new features in WordPress than most of the official release posts on the WordPress.org blog, minus the ones with published videos. Kudos goes out to all involved for the welcome screen as well as every other improvement that made it into WordPress 3.3. Let me know in the comments what you think of the new user experience polish that made it into this version.
Software Releases And The Kitchen Sink
Matt Mullenweg who every now and then publishes a long essay did so today on his personal site Ma.tt, talking about version 1.0 of software and how it’s the loneliest number. In the post, he mentions how Apple is not afraid to release a first gen product that contained flaws because waiting in the wings was the iPhone 3G ready to correct the flaws and public perception of the first generation product. Matt goes on to talk about the time frame between WordPress version 2.0 which was released on December 31st, 2005 while version 2.1 was released on January 22nd, 2007. Quite a long time between releases. Although on paper it looked like the development team took a hiatus, in fact, that specific time period saw a rapid rise in developers contributing to WordPress. However, the ‘one more thing‘ problem crept up preventing a release from happening sooner.
I think that is a common problem amongst software in general, proprietary or open. I can’t recall the first generation of a product or piece of software that was perfect. One more thing syndrome is a mindset issue. Matt illustrates this perfectly within the following paragraph:
I imagine prior to the launch of the iPod, or the iPhone, there were teams saying the same thing: the copy + paste guys are *so close* to being ready and we know Walt Mossberg is going to ding us for this so let’s just not ship to the manufacturers in China for just a few more weeks… The Apple teams were probably embarrassed. But if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.
This made me think of the slogan, ‘release early, release often‘. However, you can’t release too early and too often because it will wear out the patience of users. As a software developer, you’ll do more harm than good. That’s why as it relates to the WordPress.org development cycle, I think that 3 major releases per year is a good balance between releasing often and not having a space in-between that would allow for the kitchen sink to be added to the software. Now that software upgrades are relatively pain free with the automatic upgrade system built into WordPress, the interim releases after major releases are not such a problem anymore.
Something that I think theme, plugin and software developers in general should take to heart is the following:
Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.
Your Thoughts:
How many of you out there are sitting on plugins, themes, or little software projects of your own because you feel that they are not ready for release or that the public will consider what you’ve created to be a bunch of crap? Also, I’d like to hear your take on the 3 Major releases per year strategy for WordPress. Is that a good balance or do you think it’s too much or too little?
BuddyPress Dev Chat For 10-06-10
1.2.6 Release – Many of the tickets left for 1.2.6 have patches. Ticket 2587 appears to be the only blocker dealing with the ability to hide multiple child-level comments. The feeling is that 1.2.6 is really close but a firm date can not be given.
When JJJ entered the chat about a half hour after it started, he mentioned that 1.2.6 needs to be pushed out ASAP. It’s likely that we’ll see it released by the end of this week.
Strict Release Cycles – There was some discussion on whether it was time for the BuddyPress project to adhere to a more strict release cycle. In defining strict, I noted that it probably is more about predictability rather than a strict release cycle. The core development team along with contributors will in the future, discuss whether or not if it’s possible to release 2 or 3 major versions a year per the amount of development effort that BuddyPress currently has.
BuddyPress.org – There was a call for volunteers to help clean up the Codex along with filling in the gaps. The BuddyPress.org support forum will soon show topics you’ve participated in.
I put in the suggestion that the moderator team be expanded so that more users have the capabilities to delete spam user accounts as they pollute the activity stream. It looks like in the future, some additions will come to BuddyPress that helps this issue not only for the BuddyPress website, but BuddyPress powered sites in general.
How To Participate:
If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.
chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 3:00PM Eastern time on Thursdays. #buddypress-dev.
The log for this chat can be found here.
WordPress For iPhone 2.6.1 On The Horizon
Version 2.6 of the WordPress iPhone app was released a few days ago with the most notable addition to the app being support for video. However, while new features and some outstanding issues were fixed, 2.6 introduced new bugs or made current ones worse.
We’ve received many reports of improved speed and ease of use, so we’re happy to hear that many of you are happy with the update.
However, since WordPress is such an amazing and extensive platform, we weren’t able to fix everything, and in some cases we created new bugs that made things worse.
Chris Boyd outlined some of the issues being reported the most by users which include crashing during video uploads for WordPress.org users, crashing after video compression, and crashes at the start screen. The app is working just fine for me although I have yet to try adding any photos or videos to any of my posts. If you have an issue with version 2.6, report it in the comments or within the feedback section of the forum.
WordPress Dev Chat For 9-23-10
Advanced Taxonomy Queries – Mark Jaquith updated everyone on the status of his advanced taxonomy queries. Scribu has been working on cleaning up the functionality and that is done with the exception of bug fixing. Now the scope and the best syntax for it needs to be determined, what to support, etc. If the scope can be determined by next week, it should be good to go. The ticket for this functionality is #12891
Blessed Tickets – The following tickets have been blessed for WordPress 3.1
Internal Linking – Progress on the internal linking has stalled somewhat but TinyMCE integration is done, needs some work on the dialog’s UI. You can keep track of the developments of internal linking via ticket #11420.
Searching Installed Themes – Ryan Boren is working on this feature. Looks like the last thing that needs to be done is adding a feature filter.
Separate Network Dashboard – Not much movement, just awaiting some User Interface time.
Admin Bar – The base of the admin bar will most likely be built around the one developed by Andy Peatling for BuddyPress as it has a decent API already.
UX/UI Projects – John Nolan updated everyone on the status of the UI group and the projects they are working on which include: blue bar refresh, accessible skin, CSS refactor, and inconsistencies getting cleared up. You can keep tabs on their work via their development blog.
How To Participate:
If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server. For an overview of what these development meetings are all about, please read the following post, purpose of the dev chat.
chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 4:30PM Eastern time or 20:30 UTC Thursdays. #wordpress-dev.
The log for this chat can be found here.
WordPress Dev Chat For 5-20-10
General RC Readiness
RC readiness could be better. However, a big punt is needed but 3.0 is now under 100 tickets. The blockers are under control. Menus are looking good now that the IE issues are fixed. The rest of the menu tickets are trivial and if needed, can be punted. JohnONolan will be submitting a few UI patches for other stuff and Jane will be going through a final walk through this weekend to see if there is any UX that was missed. The list of remaining tickets for WordPress 3.0 can be found here. The patches that are in Has Patch/Needs Testing, needs testing. If anyone could help out on that, it would be appreciated.
It looks like the importers that are bundled with WordPress will be ripped out and turned into a core plugin with the exception of the WordPress one. The WordPress importer plugin can be found here.
Shrinking of WordPress. In order to have WordPress 3.0 avoid tripping memory limits on shared hosts, certain items are being lifted from the core. The importers are one of those items. TinyMCE.js is also on the slate to be removed. Removing stuff form WordPress is just a stop gap measure to the original problem so that WordPress 3.0 will not be delayed any further.
RC1 looks set to be released by the end of next week or sooner.
Meeting Time
Taken off list to figure out timezones etc.
Update On WordPress Tests
Peter Westwood stated that as far as wordpress-tests is concerned – they exist, I use them, I’m trying to keep them up-to-date and I will have them running automatically when it is worth doing – too many failures at the moment which need reviewing. If people want to play with them they are in svn here: http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-tests/
How To Participate:
If you want to suggest a topic to be discussed at the next meeting, you can by visiting the WordPress development updates blog. If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.
chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 4:30PM Eastern time or 20:30 UTC Thursdays. #wordpress-dev.
WordPress Dev Chat For 4-29-10
Status Check
Despite the decision to release beta 2 last Monday, the menus are still holding everything up. Work is continuing on the menu system and once it’s close to being finalized, beta 2 will be pushed out. Right now, it looks like Beta 2 will be released in the next few days and hopefully, RC1 after the post code sprint at WordCamp San Francisco is completed. As for Multi-Site, Andrew Nacin pointed out that there are still some bugs that need addressed. Specifically: upload directories, network.php needs non-apache awareness, IIS rewrite rules, and 12142.
GSoC
There are a total of 15 students for this years edition of the Google Summer Of Code. They can be found here along with their respective projects. A more detailed post about this is forthcoming for the dev blog once WCSF is over with. There will also be a public blog for student updates that people can follow if they are interested in a specific project.
JavaScript library preferences
Keep an eye on the WordPress Developers Prologue site as a debate regarding the use of jQeury versus Javascript ensues. According to Filosofo, there are issues with performance, bad design, and bugginess with jQuery.
Menus
One of the big ticket items concerning menus is ticket 13154 where editing menus causes pages/posts to be deleted. There are also some serious styling issues seen in IE6. There are also some drag n drop issues. I encourage you to read the log file as it’s an interesting discussion surrounding menus and IE6.
Ticket 10607
There was a bit of discussion around ticket 10607 that ended up breaking WordPress MU.
WPMU literally used is_null() to check, in a loop, which completely tanked a page. We now return an empty array. No problems if a plugin is using empty(). But we’re introducing back compat issues with is_null. I’m okay with that, but if it was used in MU, who knows where else it was used. If we change it back, we’ll continue to need to occasionally cast as an array, or use empty, et al. This is a change that can break plugins.
Plugin developers are reminded to test their plugins on the beta versions of WordPress to see if this particular change breaks them.
Trashed items interfere with page/post slug generation
Based on ticket 11863. After some discussion, there will be some added messaging for users when they are trying to use a permalink that is already present and held within the trash bin.
Fallback theme changes
I’ll refer you to the point in the discussion this was brought up. It relates to tickets 13009 and 12425
How To Participate:
If you want to suggest a topic to be discussed at the next meeting, you can by visiting the WordPress development updates blog. If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.
chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 4:30PM Eastern time or 20:30 UTC Thursdays. #wordpress-dev.