Just wanted to pass a note along that my review of the new WordPress HelpCenter has been published on WPCandy.com. In this review, I share my opinions as well as my experience I had when I decided to give them a call and ask an easy question to see if I could get an answer within three minutes.
Also, we have an ongoing thread on the forum discussing this new service which you can contribute to if you desire.
Sarah over at BloggingTips.com has published a short and sweet article explaining how to setup WordPress out of the box to work like a CMS. She also gives a listing of recommended plugins to accomplish the task.
Upon upgrading my development site for testing to the latest nightly build of WordPress, I discovered that the first bits and pieces of the Widget management system were added. Just as I had hoped for, the system works like a cross between 2.3 and 2.5 leaning more towards 2.3. On the left, you have a listing of available widgets. On the right, you have sidebars available where you drag widgets from the left, to the right, just like it worked in WordPress 2.3. However, there are a few differences.
Instead of a drop down list of sidebars available, all of them in your theme show up on the right hand side. Also, the sidebar titles are shown on the right so if a theme author has given the widgetized areas of their theme common sense placement names, it should be rather simple to place widgets in the desired location the first time around. Also, multi-widgets works as expected.
At the bottom of the page is a container for inactive Widgets. At this stage of the game, I am a bit confused with why there is an inactive widgets container and a container filled with widgets you can use. They are all widgets and if they are there, then they are all usable. But this system is still very early in development. It’s obvious that a few styling issues need to be addressed but more importantly, some UI enhancements need to take place which I’m sure will happen in the coming days.
But I can honestly say, I like what I’m seeing and I’d rather just drag stuff around rather than clicking around and selecting drop downs from multiple sidebars.
For those who didn’t get a chance to listen to episode 50 of the WordCast Podcast, you missed Kym Huynh’s awesome WordPress Rap. So, he’s been a trooper and sent me the mp3 file which you can download and take a listen to. It definitely fits the bill for being a ‘rap‘. Right click and save the file to your desktop.
I’ve been in talks with Brian Layman for a long time with regards to doing a WordPress meetup in the northern Ohio area. Ever since I attended my first WordCamp in Dallas, TX I’ve been wanting to tap into that experience, what better way to do that than a WordPress Meetup? Here in Ohio, I like to tell people that the closest thing to a tech conference we ever have is a LAN Party. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore as now there is a Podcamp Ohio along with WordCamp Columbus, two events covering topics I am very interested in.
The WordPress meetup will be taking place at 7PM EDT every fourth Thursday of the month at Office Space Coworking located in Akron, OH. This means the first event will be held on April 23rd, 2009. The building features WiFi internet, a cozy atmosphere and the equipment necessary to do presentations.
Please checkout their location page for information on where they are located and to figure out the directions on how to get their. This event is tailored in a location which is easily accessible between Cleveland, Akron/Canton, and Youngstown.
For the first meeting, there is no set agenda. I think if we all make it to the building on time, we’ll consider this a good start. Perhaps we’ll be able to talk about the release of WordPress 2.8 :)
WPWebHost which is a webhosting company specializing in hosting WordPress powered websites has put their design finalists on display for their respective categories. Now it’s up to us to vote for the winner. The categories range from clean and minimalist to grunge. Notable websites within this design contest include Joost De Valk, DZine-Studios, R. Bhavesh, Blog Design Studio, Blog Perfume and Will Anderson. Hey, I know Will Anderson! Head on over and place your vote for each category. Voting ends on May 6th, 2009.
First off, Lyceum is the answer to the trivia question I presented in episode 49 of WordPress Weekly. More importantly, Lyceum is the name of the open-source software project developed by ibiblio. Its development is synchronous with WordPress although as it stands, development has pretty much been at a standstill as the last version to be released was a bugfix back in June of 2008 which is based off of the 2.0.x WordPress code branch. However, Lyceum and WordPress MU are very similar in functionality but there is a big difference between the two. That being, Lyceum stores all of its information in a set number of database tables (it has a normalized schema). WordPress MU, on the other hand, adds new tables for each weblog added (it has a sharded schema). This difference in database schemas is what gives Lyceum its bread and butter. According to the developer:
Lyceum’s schema is normalized, MU’s is, roughly speaking, sharded. For massive installations such as WordPress.com, a sharded schema is preferable. A normalized schema is preferable for everyone else. A normalized schema offers advantages in performance, ease of upgrades and administration, and vast opportunities for developing plugins and features which can access the entire set of data in the installation.
“Show me the last 10 posts across all blogs” is impossible in MU without maintaining and accessing a separate, redundant index table at the application layer. In Lyceum, it is trivial and fast, even for thousands of blogs.
In February, a discussion was started on the Lyceum users mailing list about the future of the project. In this discussion, someone mentioned that John, who is the lead developer of the project should think about getting hired by Automattic to maintain a Normalized version of WPMU. Here is what John had to say.
Hmm, an intriguing idea :) I’ve actually pondered various flavors of this on and off over the years. I think if I decide to continue Lyceum development, I will get in touch with them to explore if there are possibly points of collaboration.
Last but not least, the topic in the Lyceum IRC channel is ‘Lyceum Lives‘ which to me sounds like the project will continue. But, I have sent an email to John to get his take on the matter.
I know I have a few WPMU users in the audience so I have a few questions for you. would you like to see this project continue? Does the difference in database schemas mean anything to you? Have you given this project a try?
Cathy Perkins who operates the website, The WordPress Wizard will be our special guest on the 50th episode of WordPress Weekly Friday, April 10th. We’ll be discussing general WordPress topics with Cathy including maintenance, backup and recovery, traffic analysis, and other WordPress related topics. This episode is aimed at the end user rather than the developer.
At about this time every year, the folks over at Webware present their Webware 100 finalists on which to vote on to see who will take the crown in their respective category. In 2008, WordPress was the winner of the publishing category. This year, the category is called Social Networking and Publishing in which WordPress.com along with the WordPress Platform are among one of the choices to vote for. The poll is being conducted via PollDaddy and the results will be announced on April 19th.
In this special Saturday edition of WordPress Weekly, David and I had the chance to interview Joost De Valk of Yoast.com. During the interview, we discussed plugin development, WordPress SEO, why Joost has not created his own SEO plugin, his thoughts on some of the WordPress Google Summer Of Code projects for 2009 and much more. Joost sounded great from across the pond considering he had a 20mb up/down connection. Wow!
This episode of WordPress Weekly is sponsored by, WebDevStudios.com. WebDevStudios is a website development company specializing in WordPress support and development services. Contact them today for help with your WordPress powered website.
Next Episode: Friday April 3rd, 2009 8P.M. EST
Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe
Length Of Episode: 43 Minutes
Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode48.mp3
Listen To Episode #48: