You know that annoying problem of when you switch to a theme and then switch back to the original, you lose your widget configuration? It looks like that problem has been solved but the WordPress team needs your help on deciding how long your widget configurations should be saved. Amongst the choices provided, I chose to go with Other. When thinking about it, I figure that if Widget configurations can be stored as revisions, then all of the other time periods need not apply. So far, Indefinitely is leading the way but if you use the revisions technique, that seems like indefinite to me just as long as you don’t reset or flush out the revisions. The comments following the poll make for interesting reading.
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Just in time for the holidays, the WordPress Swag store has reopened. There are two things worth noticing. The first is that the link does not point to WP SwagStore which is where the original store called home. The second is that the new store is running on Joomla. It was shocking to me as well as others when I mentioned that fact on Twitter. Andrew Nacin while not directly involved with the project has explained why the site is using Joomla through HelloMerch.com:
The swag store at wpswagstore.com is built on WP. The store for this holiday season is, clearly, not. Typically, merchandise was kept at Pier 38 and mailed by the fine folks at Automattic. Because of Automattic staffing changes and the closing of Pier 38 (all current merchandise is in storage — this is all new stuff), there was a need to re-route orders to a fulfillment center. In order to get this live as quickly as possible, a third-party service was used. Right now, every available core/community developer is working on version 3.3. No one is available to develop (and rapidly develop, at that) the existing swag store to get it up to speed for the current (and who knows, possibly transient) fulfillment situation. This is all just temporary.
First off, a huge thank you to Andrew Nacin who is one of the few that understands a thing or two about communication. Secondly, definitely browse around through the store as a new Red colored hoodie has been added as well as a red, green, or blue Christmas ornament featuring the WordPress logo. While I prefer that the ornaments be priced around $5.00, I decided to purchase a blue one. The ordering experience wasn’t too bad. Shipping ended up being half the cost of the item but considering it’s a WordPress branded ornament, I’ll let it slide.
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The problem lies with the business schools which are at fault. What we’ve done in America is to define profitability in terms of percentages. So if you can get the percentage up, it feels like we are more profitable. It causes us to do things to manipulate the percentage. [...] Christensen even suggests that in slavishly following such thinking, Wall Street analysts have outsourced their brains.
Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy in Forbes. Hat tip: Lane Becker.
Do you think you’re an expert on WordPress trivia? Then, try your hand at The WordPress Game Show, fresh from WordCamp Detroit 2011.
This handy Jeopardy-inspired game is build entirely on WordPress and is sure to be a crowd pleaser at your local WordPress meetup, or perhaps even the centerpiece to your Thanksgiving celebrations.
Siobhan McKeown has published a disturbing yet not out of the ordinary article that explains how a couple of plugins were recently added to the plugin repository that were using a version of J-Query from J-Query.org which after investigation proved to be a fake website. The purported J-Query file was actually propagating sites with CPA Infinity Affiliate Links. After the article was published, Otto responded in the comments to make note that the plugins were removed and the user who uploaded them has been banned. This is yet another reminder that the WordPress plugin repository is a powerful place to do naughty business for those that can get past a couple pair of eyeballs and not get noticed right away.
For the future, Otto recommends doing the following if you spot something malicious within a plugin on the repository:
Obviously malicious code doesn’t last long before somebody spots it (this one only lasted a week before somebody noticed, and it would have been removed that same day if anybody had reported it to us at plugins@wordpress.org), but unintended security holes can become widely propagated for a longer period of time, leading to issues when hackers find and exploit them. So they are of a somewhat higher priority to find.
Apparently, reporting offending plugins to that email address gets swifter action than anything else. Although not related specifically to this story, I think it’s good to be reminded of June 21, 2011 when a number of suspicious commits were made to popular plugins after hackers gained access to the plugin repository. Thankfully, those commits were caught in a short period of time but there is no guarantee that they would catch them in time again.
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One of the big hits from this years WordCamp Detroit event is now available to be played from home. For the first time I believe, attendees were able to play a jeopardy style WordPress game. The game features 5 different categories with 5 questions ranging from 100 to 500 points. While playing the game, I was relieved to know most of the answers to the HistoryPress category. As far as the other categories go, I didn’t to do bad with those either and the ones I missed ended up with a really close answer. If you have a few minutes to spare, play the game for yourself and then come back and report how well you did. Be honest!
Great idea and execution by Anthony Montalbano, TJ List, and the rest of the WordCamp Detroit crew. I’m hoping that at some point, the execution of this game can be released in the form of a plugin where we can change around the categories as well as the questions.
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Graphite is a simple, clean, highly readable theme that would suit any type of blog or website.
Lagom as a visually clean design with a classic blog layout.
Mistletoe is a two column minimalist Christmas-themed blog design with a cute snowman illustration and chic handwriting fonts.
by James at November 21, 2011 02:15 PM under wordpress themes
Last week The Hibbs Lupus Trust posted a tweet thanking various people after their site was mentioned in a tweet by Stephen Fry. Lupus is a horrible condition and the Trust aims to help raise awareness of it, support sufferers and help GPs diagnose it.
Lupus causes the body’s immune system to go into overdrive and starts to attack itself. It is believed that over 50,000 people throughout the UK suffer with Lupus of whom 90% are female. The symptoms are many and varied, and the condition often seems to mimic other diseases. This gives rise to difficulty in diagnosis and the condition can be overlooked for years, unless the GP or consultant is alert to the possibility of lupus.
The Trust’s website must have experienced a torrent of traffic because Mr Fry is followed by gazillions of people and the tweet was retweeted by over 100 of his followers. The website stayed up and I’m glad that WP Super Cache played a part in helping them.
I wanted to mark the occasion of a website getting a Frying and surviving so I changed the “Digg proof” message in the plugin to “Stephen Fry Proof”. Download the development version from this page if you want a look. The link in the admin page goes to the Trust’s tweet so I hope I can play a small part in spreading the word.
Of course, just because you’re using this plugin is no guarantee that your site will survive a mention by Mr Fry or any other celebrity on Twitter (especially if your hosting is simply too limited) but With WP Super Cache at least it has a fighting chance!
BONUS: In case you didn’t see it, here’s Stephen Fry ag caint as Gaeilge (talking in Irish) as he appeared on an Irish language tv programme a while back:
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by Donncha O Caoimh at November 21, 2011 01:55 PM under wp-super-cache
We need your opinion! One of the features we’re adding to WordPress 3.3 (currently in beta 3) is intended to reduce widget pain. Say you’re using Theme A and you have a handful of widgets set up. You switch to Theme B, and it has different widget areas, so you add/remove/edit your widgets. Then you realize that you hate Theme B. “This theme doesn’t represent my innermost soul!” you cry to the heavens. You switch back to Theme A, but because it had different widget areas, now your widgets are messed up. Argh, right? Not for long!
Imagine being able to change themes and modify widgets as needed, and if you decided to go back to your old theme, it would return your widgets to how they were the last time you had that theme activated. Sounds good, yeah? The problem we’re facing is deciding how long to save the old widget configuration, since there are so many potential workflows. If you changed From Theme A to Theme B and added more widgets over the next few weeks, if you switched back to Theme A after a month, would you still expect it to go back to the widgets from a month ago? At what point does it go from handy timesaver to unexpected widget mangler? What do you think?
View This Pollby Jane Wells at November 20, 2011 06:18 PM under Development
Jetpack 1.2 has been released, bringing more core WordPress.com features to self-hosted WordPress blogs.
This major update to the popular plugin brings super-easy email subscriptions (just add the widget and you’re done), Google+ has been added to the sharing buttons, new short codes for VideoPress and Google Maps, and a quick and easy Image widget.
If you’re using Jetpack, upgrade now! If not, now is the perfect time to try it!
Dictionary Box provides an internal dictionary on the footer of your pages with double click functionality and audio pronounce.
IPage Slides is a simple slideshow which can be used to show your blog post content in an interactive way.
Thoora Widget allows you to curate and publish beautiful, authoritative, topical pages on the subjects you care most about.
WP Theme Options is a simple plugin that adds several options to your theme.
Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent.
FoxyPress is a custom plugin made to integrate FoxyCart e-commerce functionality into your WordPress website.
Jetpack supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.
One of the terms you’ll hear a lot within the WordPress community is Metaboxes. These boxes are what users interact with the most when using WordPress. For instance, when writing a post, you interact with the Publish, Categories, Tags and if need be, Post Format metaboxes. If you are a developer or consultant, the chances are pretty high that you’ll be creating one or more of these for your projects. If you don’t fancy writing all of the code to create those metaboxes, check out Bill Ericksons Custom Meta Boxes plugin.
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Lorelle shared an interesting plugin that can be used to show data called beCounted. Check out their example of the 2010 Open Source CMS Market Share report which they’ve turned into a page where you can view how many downloads have occurred for each publishing system since you visited the page.
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Tom Coburn raised an interesting question yesterday under our “How do you host your blog?” post.
What I’ve always wondered is how website owners have any luck at all getting revenue from their websites?
With that question in mind, do you monetize your blog? If so, how do you do it? Do you display ads, charge a subscription fee, offer premium services, or something else entirely?
This is an aggregation of blogs talking about WordPress from around the world. If you think your blog should be part of this send an email to Matt.
For official WP news, check out the WordPress Dev Blog.
November 23, 2011 08:15 AM
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