YoastArchives - Yoast - Tweaking Websites: On the GPL, Themes, Plugins & Free.

July 2nd, 2009

So, we've finally got an official word on this, the one sentence summary by Matt reads:

PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

Ok, so that's the final truth, because the Software Freedom Law Center (who are of course absolutely NOT partial in this, even though they're called the "Software Freedom Law Center") said so. Nice. Really nice actually as all I've done and released for WordPress, ever, has always been GPL, and I chose to work with Brian because his themes were GPL and the others were not (at the time).

You'd think I'd be happy, and I am, sort of. But I've got an itch that needs scratching. With this final statement, there's also a new page on WordPress.org for Commercially supported GPL WordPress theme makers, and StudioPress is among those of course.

So, all the theme makers who decide to go fully GPL (their artwork and CSS included), can get listed on that page. Well, good for them. You'd think, that by now, Matt and Automattic would have been smart enough to know who their friends and who their foes are. I'm not saying these theme makers aren't their friends. But there are these people out there, who have been building things that have been GPL all the time, who do NOT get that recognition.

Of course, we plugin authors get to host our own plugins on wordpress.org, and we can get links back to our site etc. But where's the page for commercially supported GPL WordPress PLUGINS Matt? Don't you think it's time you started treating the plugin authors the same way as the theme authors? Or do we have to start a theme war for that first?

And yes I do have an interest in this, and yes I am planning on going the "commercially supported GPL" route with some of my plugins, just because keeping them all free doesn't make any sense any more. Free does other things, just as Chris Anderson says, it has helped tremendously in getting my name out, but "free" doesn't make me rich, far from it even. I can be quite honest in that so far, in working with Brian on StudioPress... Well let's just say the effort to gain ratio is a LOT better.

The fact that people are able to build business models around a project, is the reason that projects grow. The premium theme market, started by Brian but also greatly pushed by my buddies at WooThemes and others, has increased development on themes tremendously: it has done the entire WordPress community a lot of good. (BTW, read Daniel Jalkut's post on the GPL vs liberal licenses, it's a very good read and offers some nice food for thought).

So my plea, to you, Matt, is to help people build up viable business models around WordPress Themes AND Plugins. For several reasons, including the fact that I'm loving to be able to make a living with it, but also because I think it will do the community a lot of good. And ow yeah, I'd love a haiku on WordPress.org about me too!

This is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites. A good blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Use WestHost, and you'll never have issues again!

On the GPL, Themes, Plugins & Free.

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WordPress.com News: June Wrap-Up

July 2nd, 2009

Last month we launched the Yahoo! App and 360 importer so you can migrate your content to WordPress.com quickly and easily. And we introduced the SocialVibe widget, which helps you earn donations for the charity of your choice. July will bring more feature updates, and more of the themes and customizations you’ve been asking for. We’re listening.

Here are the stats for June:

  • 388,580 blogs were created.
  • 5,845,417 posts were published.
  • 411,540 new users joined.
  • 5,800,941 file uploads.
  • 3,633 gigabytes of new files.
  • 810 terabytes of content transferred from our datacenters.
  • 8,330,617 comments.
  • 6,841,633 logins.
  • 1,245,935,191 pageviews on WordPress.com, and another 1,245,882,985 on self-hosted blogs (2,491,818,176 total across all WordPress blogs we track).
  • 2,153,176 active blogs where “active” means they got a human visitor.
  • 1,447,021,840 words.

Plus:

You published 37,894 posts using the WordPress for iPhone app.

The new GigaOM Pro launched, powered by BuddyPress.

WordCamps in June: WordCamp Chicago, WordCamp RDU, WordCamp Brasil, and WordCamp Dallas.

WordCamps coming up in July: WordCamp Montreal and WordCamp UK.


planetOzh: Let’s Get More Contestants Into the WordPress Plugin Competition

July 2nd, 2009

wp-plugin-compThe WordPress Plugin Competition is the best moment of the year, plugin wise. This year’s edition is still running till the end of the month of July and as of writing, there are about 10 plugins (with some really interesting stuff).

Still, new plugins are released every day. Why aren’t these authors joining the competition?

Participating in the competition is

Instructive: you *will* learn something. Guaranteed. Or refunded. Basically, joining the competition is asking for feedback, so judges will tell you what they liked, disliked, loved and hated. I will be an official judge in this competition and I will definitely tell you what looked cool and what sucked in my opinion (for the record, read my review of last year’s edition here and there)
All the feedback you’ll get won’t be golden rules for sure, they’ll be personal points of views, but there has to be something to be learnt from it.

Exposing: definitely, participating will give you good exposure. You will end up being listed in various places that will blog about the Competition, including on very high traffic blogs. More exposure means more users for your plugin, obviously.

Motivating: as the competition deadline will approach, you will get more comments from readers, and hopefully more ideas for your plugin. Plugin authors themselves cross-pollinate each other.

Rewarding: you’ll get exposure, feedback, and eventually you might be a winner of some prize or cold cash. While this should probably not be the main reason of your participating, well, that’s the icing on the cake, right? :)

Participating in the competition is not

For the pros only: please don’t be too shy and just think “I’m not good enough, this is my first plugin, competition is not for me”. So, you’re a beginner, and so what? Nobody is going to laugh at you, you will not be mocked or anything, and everybody was a n00b at some point. This is a unique opportunity to have your plugin and your code reviewed by rather experienced coders and WordPress users.

Time consuming: it’s not like participating will require you to dedicate more time to your plugin or to support requests. Once your plugin is released, you’re just one tiny blog post and a mail away from being officially a competitor. Really, a short announcement is all it takes. The competition rules are no extra burden.

What you should do now

If you’re a plugin author, well, JOIN! Don’t release a plugin in the next few weeks without getting it listed in the competition.

If you know people who do or will release plugins, tell them about the Competition and explain why they should join. There’s just no valid reason not to.

Blog, tweet, reblog and retweet about the competition. I’m sure there are more reasons to participate than the ones I’ve listed here, so post about them.

If you’re an internet business and are more or less related to WordPress (premium themes or plugins, hosting service, ad platform…) or just anyone cool, consider sponsoring the Competition and tell your customers and readers about it. That’s cheap exposure and positive karma for you (for this matter, please get in touch with Mark from Weblogtoolscollection.com)


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Ajay on WordPress: Icons for Ajax Edit Comments

July 2nd, 2009

I’ve got tonnes of feedback about Ajax Edit Comments and several of these are requests for new icons that the plugin uses. I’m thinking along the lines of having different sets of icons and so this email goes out to everyone asking for recommendations on what icons I should use for the plugin.

If you’re interested in knowing what the icons are required, check the images folder of the plugin. I’m planning at least two sets of icons for the plugin, so please give me as many suggestions as possible so that I can select accordingly.

Remember that the icons need to be GPL or royalty free. I cannot use paid icons for the plugin.

Visit: Techtites - Your Daily dose of all things tech!

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Icons for Ajax Edit Comments was first posted on July 2, 2009 at 3:01 pm.
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WordPress.com News: National Blog Posting Month

July 2nd, 2009

Remember National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) back in November? You all used the opportunity to take a swing at churning out a 50,000-word novel on your blogs in only one month — some with great success!

There’s also NaBloPoMo, which has nothing to do with post-modernism, but with blogging! It stands for National Blog Posting Month.

It’s an even more fitting occasion for posting regularly to your blog on the topics that interest you. And maybe the best part is that it starts whenever you want it to! The only objective is to post every day for a month. So why not begin with July? To make it official, sign up here. It’s open to anyone with a blog, anywhere in the world.

The NaBloPoMo team provides a theme for each month, which isn’t mandatory, but is a nice way to gain inspiration that can kick off your daily updates.

Not into that? Then we suggest sticking to the stuff you’ve been blogging about all along — the things you experience and love — with the added caveat of keeping it on the regular.

If you run out of steam, you can always find ways to blog about the dozens of weird celebrations and holidays that take place in July, in addition to Independence Day in the U.S. — like Ice Cream Soda Day, Video Games Day, or Bugs Bunny’s Birthday.

To plug the WordPress community into your endeavor, we suggest using NaBloPoMo09 as a tag on each post you publish to your blog. They’ll show up on the tag results page, which is also a great place to get inspired by your fellow bloggers.

A note: Please refrain from commenting with questions about NaBloPoMo in response to this post. It’s not a WordPress project. Instead, check out their FAQ to learn more about its objectives and requirements.

Happy (daily) blogging!


Nathan Rice » Planet WordPress: Final Word on WordPress Themes and the GPL?

July 2nd, 2009

Matt Mullenweg, the founder and lead developer of the WordPress blogging platform, emailed the Software Freedom Center recently asking about the legality of WordPress themes being licensed under copyright not compatible with the GPL, and they’ve now responded, which Matt has published on the WordPress Development Blog.

The conclusion? The PHP files in WordPress themes must inherit the GPL, but CSS and Images do not. From the email:

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code.

Obviously, since many premium theme developers, including iThemes, have adopted the GPL completely for their themes, including CSS and Images, this news doesn’t make a big difference for us.

But because neither side can claim they were 100% correct, the declaration is bittersweet to those on both sides of the issue.

Those claiming that themes must be completely covered by the GPL can no longer claim that:

… the images and CSS are not [subject to the requirements of the GPL]. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

But those claiming that they can license their themes — in their entirety — under a restrictive license seem to have been in the wrong as well. Or were they?

In the last paragraph of the email, it seems there is, at the very least, a potential loophole.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

If it’s possible, though not ideal, for a WordPress theme to run independent of WordPress itself, then one must assume (at least from the wording of that paragraph) that the PHP code isn’t necessarily required to be subject to the requirements of the GPL.

Obviously, this is the first time anyone has been able to speak about the issue with authority, so this is helpful. But I’m afraid this story isn’t over yet.

I, obviously, support licensing themes (free or paid) under the GPL. But despite this latest news, I’m still very reluctant to say that the legality of the issue has been completely cleared up. There are still too many questions, and not nearly enough answers. One thing is for sure, theme authors have been adopting the GPL all over the place lately. And WordPress just launched their commercial GPL theme directory today. Perhaps the legality of all this GPL talk doesn’t even matter any more.

What do you think?

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Justin TadlockWordPress: How to filter a WordPress theme’s ‘more link’ text

July 1st, 2009

Changing the more link in a WordPress theme is easy. Just open your theme files and change it. But, if you’re writing a plugin to change this or want to preserve your theme’s code (e.g., child themes), you need a way to easily edit this.

I’ve seen some themes add their own more link filter hook, but this is unnecessary because WordPress 2.8 introduced the_content_more_link filter hook. Maybe this post will help those theme authors cut back on an extra filter hook when it’s not needed.

This will allow us to easily overwrite the default.

What is the more link?

When writing a WordPress post, you can cut the text off at any point by adding in this code:

<!--more-->

If you’re using a theme that shows the standard full post on the home/blog page of your site, this will cut the article short at the point you added the code. It will also add a link to the single-post view where the reader can continue reading the post.

Using the_content_more_link filter hook

What we want to do is change our theme’s more link text, but we need to do this the appropriate way, and the appropriate way means not hacking up your theme author’s code.

Let’s assume our theme’s more link outputs “(more…)” when we add the <!--more--> link within the post editor. Maybe we don’t like that message too much. We’d like to change it to read “Continue reading →” instead.

Open your theme’s (or child theme’s) functions.php file and paste this code in:

<?php

add_filter( 'the_content_more_link', 'my_more_link', 10, 2 );

function my_more_link( $more_link, $more_link_text ) {
	return str_replace( $more_link_text, 'Continue reading &rarr;', $more_link );
}

?>

That’s all there is to it. Enjoy your custom more link text.


WordPress TavernWordPress-org: WordPress Dev Chat For 7-1-09

July 1st, 2009

So the WordPress development meeting took place today and boy was the atmosphere conducive to discussion. Lots of things discussed while new ideas were generated. Unfortunately, you get a bunch of developers into a chat room and when you announce an idea or feature, the talk immediately turns into implementation which results in an unruly court that needs to be settled down to get back on track. But, the meeting went on and the following are the bullets points that were discussed regarding WordPress 2.9. Jane is currently working on putting the feature list together to be voted upon in a poll that will be published on the WordPress development blog to get a sense of where the end users priority lies.

post thumbnails, mark: The ability to use a custom field key to assign a thumbnail image to a post excerpt.

media albums, mark – The addition of photo albums to display images. I believe this to be different from galleries.

bulk media import API

make adding embeds easier (like viper plugin) – The inclusion of popular shortcodes to support major video sites like YouTube etc.

enable most media settings as defaults that can be overridden on a per image/file or per-use basis.

cropping, resizing, and rotation (in 90 degree increments) for image uploads, filtering – This would be the extend of basic photo enhancement. As a few others said, we really don’t want to see Photoshop in the WordPress write panel for images.

Custom Image Sizes. Instead of hardcoded thumb, med, large (manually configuring maximum image sizes for small, thumbnail etc)

lightboxing images: It’s been decided not to add Lightbox as a core feature just yet.

post types: For WordPress 3.0

page exclude plus reorder for blog nav: nikolayb – The ability to easily remove a page from showing in the navigation menu while also providing UI to sort the order of the menu.

media metadata – The addition of tags and categories to sort media.

uploader feature: ability to choose from most recently used/most often used/marked as favorite files

more default shortcodes. check top ten from wp.com. slideshare and any place that advertises wp.com shortcodes

importers (specifics TBD)

and UI header brushup and uploader UI – I imagine this has to do with the header poll that was announced after 2.7 was released.

That’s about it. Not sure what next weeks topic will be about but if you want to suggest one, 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 5PM Eastern time on Wednesdays. #wordpress-dev.

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YoastArchives - Yoast - Tweaking Websites: Yet Another WordPress Podcast

July 1st, 2009

I've just agreed with my buddy Daron Babin of WebmasterRadio.FM to be the host for a weekly WordPress podcast, no names or time slots decided yet but I'm so excited about the news that I wanted to share it with you all!

All your suggestions for names, topics and guests are welcome in the comments!

This is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites. A good blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Use WestHost, and you'll never have issues again!

Yet Another WordPress Podcast

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WordPress TavernWordPress-org: Bad Comment Karma

July 1st, 2009

commentkarmaBefore making the domain move the other day, I made a mistake by deleting something I shouldn’t have from the database. It was the comment_karma field located within the wp_comments table. A long time ago, I remember installing a plugin called Comment Karma which enabled visitors to rate a comment up or down thus promoting the best user rated comments to the top.

I thought that by installing this plugin a long time ago, that it had created this entry in my database. Thinking another plugin left its stuff behind in my database, I removed it only to find out that removing it broke my commenting system to the point where the incrementer broke. To make matters worst, I didn’t do a database backup since I thought I was removing something plugin related. However, thanks to Michael Torbert, he helped me put the comment_karma field back in its location and once I did that, everything worked again.

So, when I dived into the WordPress-Dev IRC channel to see what this field is used for, someone said it was not used by anything in core and Michael told me he couldn’t find anywhere that field was being used. But, if it was not being used in core, why would it cause the commenting system to break when it’s removed?

The overall lesson here, don’t do ANYTHING to your database unless you backup first. Complacency is your enemy.

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BlogSecurity: WordPress Plugin DM Albums 1.9.2 vulnerabilities

July 1st, 2009
DM Albums™ is an inline photo album/gallery plugin that displays high quality images and thumbnails perfectly sized to your blog. Two vulnerabilities have been made public: 1. Stack released  a “remote file disclosure vulnerability” (Low-Medium Risk Level) 2. Septemb0x released a “remote file include vulnerability” (Critical Risk Level) An attacker could use these vulnerabilities to potentially gain full access [...]

BlogSecurity: WordPress Plugin Related Sites 2.1 Blind SQL Injection Vulnerability

July 1st, 2009
A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the WordPress Plugin Related Sites plugin. An exploit is available in the wild and available on Milw0rm, making this attack easier to exploit. Although, the vulnerability says that version 2.1 is vulnerable. You should assume previous versions are vulnerable as well. BlogSec have confirmed that the current version (at the [...]

WordPress TavernWordPress-org: Spam Link Injection Sucks

July 1st, 2009

Over the past few days, I’ve been helping out someone with their blog as it’s become compromised by some nasty injection code. This code is in his php files, in his content, and his database. I have no idea how it happened except that his plugin and theme folders had a permission level of 777. On top of that, I discovered some malicious themes within the themes folder containing the base64 encrypted code which I believe to be the hidden spam links.

I told him to do a fresh install the first time around which is what he did via Fantastico only to have the problem resurface. Again, the themes and plugin folders had a permission level of 777 and I found out this was because of a plugin he had installed called One Click Updater.

Currently this plugin only uses direct file access to update and install plugins/themes, so you’ll need to make the “/wp-content/plugins/” and “/wp-content/themes/” folders writable by PHP for this to work.

Either he didn’t know he could do the same thing in WordPress since version 2.7 or core plugin upgrades didn’t work. In any case, I believe the permission level to be a source of the problem. As it turned out, his database was clean but certain files located within rogue themes were injecting the encrypted code into all of his content which was only viewable by checking the source code of the site. In the end, I finally exported his site via the WXR export feature, gave him a fresh install of WordPress, imported the WXR file and told him to stay 5 miles away from the One Click Update plugin or any plugin that needs permissions for folders to be 777. Once his fresh site was online, all traces of the spam links were gone meaning his database was clean, his WXR file was clean, and he was a happy camper.

Now you might be wondering, why didn’t this guy do all of this himself? Well, he is in a unique situation where the only thing he owns is an N95 phone powered by S60. He maintains and writes content for his blog all through this phone. It’s his only connection to the digital world. So, uploading and doing things that come easy on a desktop PC is not so when all you have is a handheld phone. I give this guy a lot of credit.

To bring this back full circle, I encourage you to read Chris Coyier’s experience where he explains how his notable site CSS-Tricks ended up with hidden spam links within the content of the site and how he was able to get rid of them.

I guess we should be checking the source code of our own sites more often?

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YoastArchives - Yoast - Tweaking Websites: New Plugin: RSS Shortcode

July 1st, 2009

Yesterday, while working on a project for Springer Uitgeverij, I was amazed to find out there is no simple RSS Shortcode plugin, that simply allows you to do this:

[rss feed="http://yoast.com/feed/" num="10" excerpt="false"/]

And then that would show the feed you'd specified. Well, now there is: the RSS Shortcode plugin. It looks like this, when functioning (with excerpts set to false):

This is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites. A good blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Use WestHost, and you'll never have issues again!

New Plugin: RSS Shortcode

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Ajay on WordPress: Meebo Me plugin now on WordPress Extend

July 1st, 2009

I have uploaded yet another plugin on WordPress Extend. This one is another ancient plugin that allows you to display your chat widget from meebo me. meebo me lets you chat with your site visitors using your Meebo account.

Visitors on your blog can hit a simple button and chat with you when you are logged into meebo. This is an easy and free way to interact with your visitors.

While meebo me works with every website, this plugin makes integration with WordPress extremely simple.

Read more and download meebo me for WordPress

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Meebo Me plugin now on WordPress Extend was first posted on July 1, 2009 at 1:09 pm.
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WordCast: Dave Talks Up Social Media

June 30th, 2009

Check out this interview by Chris Yates with Dave at WordCamp Dallas:


WordCast: WordCast 58: Bottom line? Shut up.

June 30th, 2009

We were pretty dang angry this week for some reason. Dave’s hating on the Virtual WordCamp, Kym’s hating on Jane Fonda, and we’re all hating on the Air Force. But we still love you! ;)

Episode 58

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2 released

Virtual WordCamp (WTF???)

BuddyPress 1.02 released

WordPress Plugin Competition 2009 rolls along

Celebrity Pressers: Jane FondaJane MonheitThe US Air Force

Tip of the Week: Make sure you set your timezone in your WordPress

Kym’s pick: Nature WordPress Theme

Dave’s pick: Redirection plugin


Nathan Rice » Planet WordPress: What Do You Want to Know About WordPress?

June 30th, 2009

Over the next few weeks, I want to take reader-submitted questions about WordPress and answer them here on the blog. Have a question about themes? Plugins? Simple or complicated — it doesn’t matter!

If I pick your question, I’ll answer it (in as much detail as necessary) here on the blog, and link to you as the source of the question.

Hopefully this will be a BIG help to everyone out there, and make for some really good conversation! Leave your questions in the comments.

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WP Engineer: WP Roadmap

June 30th, 2009

WP Roadmap aims to create a detailed view of how WordPress works, by organizing the list of calls by the order in which they are executed

The code currently tracks actions, filters, includes, and requires. WP Roadmap can track the order of these calls from different page views and different versions of WordPress.

Click here to launch WP Roadmap
.

wp-roadmap


WordPress TavernWordPress-org: Testing WP iPhone App

June 29th, 2009

Testing the WordPress iPhone app from my iPhone 3g s which is not that bad. More to come soon.

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Sivel.net: Shadowbox JS WordPress Plugin Version 3.0.0.1 Released

June 29th, 2009

The Shadowbox JS WordPress plugin has been updated to version 3.0.0.1. This is a large update to the plugin. New to this release is a brining PHP4 support back, reduction in queries run on each load, inline change log view in plugin update notice, hide portions of settings page when all settings have been deleted from the database, and added Russian translation. See the change log for a full list of changes.

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Ajay on WordPress: Transpose Email now on WordPress Extend

June 29th, 2009

I have uploaded my lesser known email spam fighting plugin Transpose Email to WordPress Extend. So, now you can download and install and update the plugin from within WordPress Admin area itself.

Actually, the plugin has been lying neglected in the repository for several years now, before the directory even existed! However, it definitely wasn’t in usable form. I’ve rearranged the files and deleted the useless ones and the download is perfectly ready now.

Transpose Email plugin allows you to use JavaScript to create an encoded link. Clicking that link will trigger the user’s email client to open and create an email.

Download the plugin or read more about customizing the Javascript.

Visit: WebberZone Hosting - 15000MB storage, 300GB data transfer at $5/mo only!

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Transpose Email now on WordPress Extend was first posted on June 29, 2009 at 11:30 pm.
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Sivel.net: Twitter Hash Tag Widget WordPress Plugin v1.1 Released

June 29th, 2009

The Twitter Hash Tag Widget WordPress plugin has been updated to version 1.1. New to this version is compatibility with PHP versions not containing JSON support. See the change log for all changes. Enjoy!

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WordPress TavernWordPress-org: State Of The Word From WordCamp Dallas

June 28th, 2009

Matt Mullenweg was just on stage at WordCamp Dallas delivering his coveted state of the Word. This presentation is what provides insight into what the WordPress project is doing and what we can look forward to in the future. Here are my cliff notes from watching his presentation via the live stream.

Another mention of merging the codebases of WordPress.org software with WordPress MU. 99.9% code overlap between the two projects. If you’re using WordPress MU now, it won’t be much different same goes for WordPress.org. Still predicting the merging to take place around WordPress 3.0.

Matt gave a primer on BuddyPress and how cool activity streams are. He also mentioned how well the code has been written for BuddyPress so WordPress developers should dive in and take a look at how BuddyPress is doing things.

Matt mentioned advertising and how he doesn’t think blogs should have advertising. After a period of time, he believes that blogging should be about meeting people and having great conversations. If you’re going to show ads, don’t show them to the people who comment and take part in your community.

Why has WordPress gone through so many backend redesigns? WordPress 2.5 redesign broke many of the molds the WordPress backend was stuck in. However, lots of feedback and criticism related to WordPress 2.5 urged another redesign for WordPress 2.7. Matt stated that they will never do a redesign again while the audience laughed. He believes that with the new design, WordPress has a heck of foundation now to build on.

WordPress is just a blank canvass. Its what you do with it that makes it special.

TalkPress was mentioned during the Q&A. Matt mentioned they that have named a jazz musician for bbPress 1.0 meaning a release is imminent. Matt says no plans to open up the TalkPress area to the public but, it could happen in the future. If it would happen, there would be great integration between TalkPress and WordPress.com.

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WordPress TavernWordPress-org: How To Get Into The WordPress Showcase

June 28th, 2009
Douglas Hanna works for Automattic as a “Communications Engineer”, where he spends most of his time working running the WordPress Showcase and supporting WordPress.com users. He blogs about customer service at Service Untitled and occasionally uses Twitter as well.

You probably knew that WordPress could be used as a CMS for a simple content website, but did you know that it could also be used as a fully powered CMS for a complex real estate website? What about as a directory of iPhone applications? The short version of it is that WordPress is an excellent platform to do just about any sort of publishing on the web and most people aren’t aware of that. To help address that, the WordPress Showcase was created.

The Showcase aims to show the world what can be done with WordPress and help demonstrate that WordPress has tremendous capabilities as a publishing platform. For people new to WordPress or unfamiliar with the extent of its capabilities, the Showcase shows them some of the most notable, successful, and coolest uses of WordPress around the Internet. Approximately 400 sites are featured in the Showcase and the idea (and hopefully the reality) is that the sites in the Showcase are the best of the best.

For website owners, developers, designers, or business people, the Showcase can help give you instant credibility, some great link juice, a nice traffic boost, or even a personal ego boost. Regardless of your reasons for submitting your site to the Showcase, doing so isn’t difficult or time consuming.

Sites that want to be added to the Showcase need to meet one or more of the four submission criteria, which are as follows:

  • Using WordPress in a unique or innovative way.
  • Attracting tens of thousands of regular readers.
  • Being written by someone famous or especially notable in his or her particular field.
  • Representing a notable organization, government entity, or corporation as an official blog or web site.

If your site fits just one of the criterion, then it’s fine and definitely “Showcase-worthy”. Meeting all four is great (and entirely possible), but not required by any means.

Once you’ve read the criteria and have an idea on how to articulate why your site meets one of more of the items, then just head over to the WordPress Showcase Submission Page, fill out the form, and click submit site. The form asks a few simple questions and takes about two minutes to fill out. Sites that are added will be notified via email within a week or so of the original submission.

If you have any questions about the Showcase, what is and isn’t “Showcase-worthy”, or anything else, head over to this forum topic at the WordPress Tavern Forum and ask. I’ll be monitoring the topic and answering questions as they come up.

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