Community member williamsba organizer of the New Jersey WordPress Meetup is currently live streaming the event. The topic for tonight at the meetup is the installation/configuration as well as new features in Thesis 1.4.x.
*NOTE* Apparently, Brad has fell victim to the Ustream Bermuda Triangle. There were some issues involved with Ustream this evening which prevented people from watching and participating in the stream. Brad recorded the video and I’ll be publishing that once it’s available.
On January 31st, 2009 WordPres 2.7.1 beta was released on the WP-Testers mailing list. For those interested, you can download it here or if you would like to automatically upgrade from 2.7 to 2.7.1-beta1, change the version in wp-includes/version.php from 2.7 to 2.7.1-foo and then visit Tools->Upgrade as per Ryan Boren.
2.7.1 contains at least 65 completed trouble tickets with another 50 set for the 2.7.1 milestone. However, looks like most of those will be moved to the next milestone which is 2.7.2 or 2.8. If you are interested in fixing any one of the available tickets for this milestone, please visit the 2.7.1 status page and make your presence known.
No need to ask when 2.7.1 will be released to the public as it will be when it’s done. However, lets turn this into a bar game. Guess the DAY in which you believe 2.7.1 will be released to the public. My guess is February 9th. You win bragging rights if you either get the answer right on or are the one closest to the day without going ahead.
It’s only fitting that WordPress has it’s own series of holidays. After all, just about everyone and (everything) else has holidays. Today, January 28th has officially been declared by Matt Mullenweg “Thank a Plugin Developer”. Asides from paying homeage to plugin authors, Matt also lets us know that the plugin repository is called home by over 4,000 different plugins. Another little tidbit is that the average number of plugins installed per self hosted blog is five!
Considering the occasion, I’ll do a little thank you by displaying which plugins that are activated on this blog and believe it or not, I’ll even use a plugin just for that purpose. It’s called PluginsUsed written by my favorite plugin author, Lester ‘Gamerz‘ Chan. I highly encourage you to either thank a plugin author by donating some cash their way via PayPal or at the very least, provide them some link love. Plugin authors love exposure and some would argue they don’t get enough of it. The PluginsUse plugin makes this a very easy process.
Without further adieu, here are the plugins I use on WPTavern.com and vouch for.
There are 36 plugins used: 32 active plugins and 4 inactive plugins.
Akismet
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.
commentluv
» Andy Bailey (url)
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it’s ready. Will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html. See the Settings Page for styling and text output options.
Comment Quicktags -Reloaded
» Owen Winkler (url)
Inserts a quicktag toolbar on the blog comment form. WP 2.2 support by Ibrahim Faour
Contact Form 7
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.
Exclude Pages from Navigation
» Simon Wheatley (url)
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.
Executable PHP widget
» Otto (url)
Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Heavily derived from the Text widget code in WordPress.
Filosofo Comments Preview
» Austin Matzko (url)
Filosofo Comments Preview lets you preview WordPress comments before you submit them.
Form to Post
» Michael Torbert (url)
Allows users to post a post.
Google XML Sitemaps
» Arne Brachhold (url)
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page
Highlight Author Comments
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.
Insights
» Vladimir Prelovac (url)
Insights allows you to quickly search and insert information (links, images, videos, maps, news..) into your blog posts.
KB Advanced RSS Widget
» Adam R. Brown (url)
Gives user complete control over how feeds are displayed.
KG Archives
» Kates Gasis (url)
Yet another sortable archives from katesgasis.com.
No Self Pings
» Michael D. Adams (url)
Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.
OIOpublisher Direct 2.0
» Simon Emery (url)
Control your Ad Space with OIOpublisher.
Post Template
» Vincent Prat (url)
A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure. This plugin makes use of the excellent other plugin “Manage Pages Custom Columns” by Edward Dale.
Really Simple CAPTCHA
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Really Simple CAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins. It is originally created for my Contact Form 7 plugin.
Short Comment Filter
» Will Anderson (url)
Automatically Spams or Deletes comments that don’t meet a specified length criterion.
Subscribe To Comments
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess
The Excerpt re-reloaded
» Luca Biagini (url)
This plugin does something more than the built-in excerpt function. It lets choose exceprt length, allowed html tags, the link text to full post and the html container of the excerpt (,, or plain text).
Thumbnail Viewer
» Tyler Longren (url)
Thumbnail Viewer is a simple plugin for showing larger images of your thumbnails. It’s very similar to Lightbox, only much smaller. Add the rel=”thumbnail” attribute to any link tag to activate the thumbnail viewer. It’s based the wp-lightbox plugin and on the Image Thumbnail Viewer from Dynamic Drive.
Widget Logic
» Alan Trewartha (url)
Control widgets with WP’s conditional tags is_home etc
Woopra
» Elie El Khoury (url)
This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation. Simply sign up at Woopra.com, then activate the plugin and configure your site ID in the Woopra settings.
WP-PageNavi
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.
WP-PluginsUsed
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.
WP-Polls
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.
WP-PostViews
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Modified by David Potter to include options for when and where to display view counts.
WP-PostViews Widget
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds a PostViews Widget to display most viewed posts and/or pages on your sidebar. You will need to activate WP-PostViews first.
WP-Stats
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display your WordPress blog statistics. Ranging from general total statistics, some of my plugins statistics and top 10 statistics.
WP-Syntax
» Ryan McGeary (url)
Syntax highlighting using GeSHi supporting a wide range of popular languages. Wrap code blocks with <pre lang=”LANGUAGE” line=”1″> and </pre> where LANGUAGE is a geshi supported language syntax. The line attribute is optional.
WP Ajax Edit Comments
» Ajay D’Souza (url)
Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
» mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) (url)
Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.
The following guest post has been written by Andrew Rickmann who operates the Fun With WordPress website.
Not too long ago, on a domain not so far away, there was a disturbance in the community. It wasn’t the first, it won’t be the last, but it proved to me that a large distributed community like the WordPress community needs more than a project leader, more than a figure-head, and more than a great pool of evangelists. What WordPress needs is a community voice.
The voice of our community needs to be many things. First of all he needs to be respected, not for his mad coding skills, or his design acumen, but for his choice to look at things from a rational and considered perspective. He needs to know when the users are getting a raw deal from the developers, and when the developers are entirely correct in their expectation that users should go a little further to get what they want.
Secondly, while we shouldn’t rule out coding skills, he should be a user first, and a hacker last. He really needs to understand the frustration of getting a theme that doesn’t work, or following instructions that output something wrong, and not knowing how to fix it. This is a regular experience for all users, but where some people see this as a challenge to be solved we need someone who will simply say “hold on, I want this fixed“.
Third, he needs to be able to bring people together. Those people may be Matt and the users, or one user and another, or the community as a whole, but when there is a kerfuffle he needs to stop it in its tracks, strip away the emotions and religious intensity that so often surrounds such things, and help us get to the facts. He needs to mediate: a community peace envoy, if you wish to put it that way.
And of course he needs an appropriate platform from which to do that.
Finally, of course, he needs to love WordPress and the community he serves. He needs to find the new things fascinating sure, but he needs to care about what exists now. It is no good his being an uber-early adopter who quickly moves on to the next new project, he needs to use the mainstream every day and see the greatness in it, not get bored and hanker after progress.
So what does this all amount to in the real world? Well, for sure, it rules me out in so many ways. They say the best leaders are the people who don’t want to lead; I don’t know if that is true or not, but in this case I suspect it is. We have in our midst someone who never set out be a servant of the community. He never asked to be our voice, he just wanted to make a living from what he loved.
He built up his reputation by writing, by asking questions, by talking to the people who run the great ship WordPress, and putting to them the questions that we all had. Time and time again he has shown us new developments as well as great things about old developments. He has faced down Matt and asked “what the heck is going on with this?” and, more importantly, “What’s your favorite cheese?“. He has connected people. Promoted the views of users and hackers alike. And, through it all remained self deprecating, and one of us: the lowly users.
WP Tavern is already proving to be a great extension of this work. As I write this the very first post on the blog has 33 comments, the forum has 50 members and 750 posts, the first just ten days ago, and it hasn’t even been formally launched yet. Anyone who doubts that we have found our voice needs to come and be a part of this. It is only the beginning.
A quick look at the most recently submitted WordPress ideas and it appears as though spam has once again been able to creep onto the site. However, the ideas section is not the only one to feel the onslaught of spam. The WordPress Hackers mailing list as well as the Testers mailing list every now and then gets a few spam messages. But more notably, the WordPress.org forum appears to receive spam posts every day. Unlike most other forums or registration forms, the one used on WordPress.org does not contain any CAPTCHA images or any anti-spam measures. This could be the reason behind the spam getting through which is then seen by quite a few people. Although I must say, the administrators/moderators do a great job of tracking that stuff down and keeping it at bay but they can’t catch them all, at least initially.
WordPress.org Registration Form
To top things off, both the Ideas and WordPress.org Support forum don’t provide much in the way of post reporting. At least in the forum, if you come across inappropriate content, you’re supposed to flag that thread by adding the tag ‘modlook‘. This seems to have worked thus far but the technique requires that end users read the Forum Rules Forum Post which outlines this method. But who reads rules now a days? Perhaps a REPORT button which is added to every forum thread or post which automates the task of adding the modlook tag would work out better with regards to community moderation?
With regards to the WordPress Ideas site, there is no RULES page which explains the type of content that can be added to that section of the site although each idea can have tags attached to it. Suffice to say, end users can add the modlook tag to ideas which need moderation but again, this requires prior knowledge on the end users part. Something a simple graphic button that says REPORT might be able to handle better. At least one member has proposed an idea similar to the one I just described which can be read here.
While I don’t venture into the Ideas site or the WordPress.org Forums as much as I’d like, it’s a bit concerning to visit those pages and see anywhere between 1-5 spam posts.
By the way, at least one person thought Pornamzon was a poor idea. See for yourself.
One Star For Porn Idea
Now I ask that you join in on the conversation by offering your thoughts on the spam problem the various WordPress sites/mailing lists are dealing with. What are some of your ideas on how the team could better handle the situation?
Just the other day, I received an email from Angelo Mandato letting me know that he was producing a WordPress podcast called simply enough, PluginsPodcast. The show aims to review a plugin each week with occasional interviews with plugin developers, heavy plugin users and much more. Shows last between 10-15 minutes and are in MP3 format. So far, Angelo has produced episodes for his very own BluBrry Powerpress podcasting plugin, Peters custom anti spam and CForms2.
I took a listen to Angelos overview of the BlurBrry Powerpress plugin and enjoyed the high audio quality. Considering the short nature of these episodes, I believe many of you will be adding this new podcast to your Itunes subscriptions as I did because just about the entire WordPress community loves plugins.
When WordPress 2.6 was released on July 15, 2008 one of the new features to hit the core was something called Post Revisions. Post revisions keep track of changes made to a post or page and stores a copy of that page or post before the revision so in case you make a huge mistake or want to see the progression of your content, the post revisions will be right there for you to choose. While having post revisions is all fine and dandy, providing no way for the end user to actually control this feature is not.
With the recently installed version of WordPress for WPTavern, I noticed that post revisions were starting to rack up. Upon doing a Google search, I discovered that I could easily disable post revisions from occurring if I added the following code to my WP-Config.php file:
define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 0);
For some reason, this code didn’t work. Also as part of my Google search, I came across a forum thread on the WordPress.org forums from six months ago specifically about the topic of post revisions as others didn’t like the feature as well and wanted to turn it off. In the forum thread, there was an argument against adding more checkboxes and features into the backend of WordPress and how there was no negative impact with simply leaving Post Revisions turned on. Well, I can attest to the fact that when I deleted the post revisions that were made on another blog of mine from the database, the size of the database shrank considerably. While the revisions may be made up of only text, hundreds of them eventually add up. No need to convince me of compression and how well the revisions are written, I simply don’t want my database filling up with that kind of stuff.
So while reading the thread, I read about a ticket that was filed in the WordPress Trac system to address some of the issues pertaining to the feature but the ticket was closed with a resolution of Won’t Fix while the milestone was deleted. The ticket also contained a response from DD32 with a link to a post-revision plugin he had created. Instead of using his plugin, I came across another one called Revision Control which has enabled me to not only keep post revisions turned on, but I can also limit the maximum number of revisions a post/page should have. This is good enough for me to keep the post revision feature turned on.
Here is the part that I find concerning. WordPress has options for just about every feature an end user would interact with on a daily basis. Post revisions has no configuration options. Why not just add a revision section within the WRITING settings which contained options to limit the maximum amount of revisions, enable or disable post revisions, choose between post revisions for posts and pages, and that’s it. For me to install a plugin to provide the type of functionality that should have originally came bundled with that feature is concerning to say the least. One could argue that the way in which post revisions has been added could be equated to having that feature rammed down their throats. Granted, adding one line of code to the Config file of WordPress is not hard, it is not something that should have to be done.
I would open a Trac ticket to request that the features provided by the plugin I mentioned above be added to the core for the Post Revision feature, seeing the previous Trac ticket filed as WON’T FIX is a bit of a downer but thanks to the community around the project and its open source nature along with its popularity, when there is a problem, plugin developers do a great job solving them.
So what do you think of the post revisions feature? Do you use it? How do you feel about not having any way to control how the feature works from the Administration panel?
Hello there! Welcome to the WordPress Tavern. Yet another WordPress centric website although with a few differences. For starters, this website is authored by me, Jeff Chandler. For those who don’t know me, I’ve written for WordPress websites such as WPHacks.com, WeblogToolsCollection.com and others. I also host the mildly popular WordPress Weekly podcast. I got started using WordPress back in June of 2007. Here is a quick snippet of history as to how I came about using WordPress.
I purchased everything I needed during the month of May. This included a domain, hosting, and a few other tidbits. I had a general idea as to what I wanted to accomplish with the site and the way I wanted it to look, but I had no idea on where to begin. WordPress was suggested to me numerous times and even Pete suggested that I use WordPress, so that’s what I did. Initially, I couldn’t for the life of me, figure out the templating system within WordPress. I gave up and decided to use Joomla, as I had a good amount of experience with the CMS. I quickly realized, Joomla was too much of what I needed. I ended up giving WordPress a second try and since then, I have never looked back.
So you might be asking yourself, why another site dedicated to WordPress? Well, the site is not exclusively centered around WordPress but rather, WordPress is the core. I plan on covering the entire spectrum of projects under the Automattic umbrella such as BBPress, WordPress.com, BuddyPress, WordPress MU (Multi User), and much more. This site will also feature content that has been created by the WPTavern community as well as the WordPress community.
Speaking of community, we already have a rocking forum online and accessible to the public which I highly encourage you to register an account with and partake in the interesting discussions taking place on a daily basis. Registered users also have access to the Chatbox found within the forum where many people within the community stop by and chit chat throughout the day.
Now, I have big plans for this website. Ultimately, I have three goals for WPTavern. The first is to be successful. The second is to foster a community. The third is to make this my sole source of income. Speaking of the third point, their are no advertisements on the site or the forum just yet but they are on the way. In the coming days, weeks, I’ll be adding advertising spots to the forum and the site. I have a good idea on advertising methods which are annoying and those that are not so annoying. I can guarantee you that I won’t be using ads which popup or flash at you. Instead, I plan on using graphic banner ads, the 125X125 kind mixed in possibly with some 468X60 banner slots. Of course, as the WPTavern project progresses, things will most likely change.
The site is in beta form so if you come across a styling issue, an error, or notice something just isn’t working, please contact me via the contact form on this site.
I’ll be publishing information over the next few days which highlights various happenings around the site, explanations of certain features, and much more. Until then, thank you for stepping inside the WordPress Tavern and remember, the drinks are always on the house. Sit back, relax, and engage in thoughtful discussions about this awesome piece of open source software known as WordPress.