Category Archives: wordpress

Focusing on the User Experience

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Interesting post down on the WordPress blog that talks about the plans that are being made for 2010. There are some interesting developments, from new mailing lists and new initiatives. The User Interface and User Experience is a pretty important part of a system, because it’s the part that users see every day. And focusing on this is a sign that the product is mature and handling the day-to-day really well.

In my mind, a User Interface is like one of these plasma mounts for your new TV. It’s not the reason you bought your TV, but living without it just makes it so much harder, doesn’t it?

WordPress 2.9.1

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WordPress 2.9.1 is out and about and a good idea to upgrade to. It’s mainly a service release that fixes some niggles with v2.9, so it’s really up to you if you want to upgrade from 2.9 or not. I personally always move up to the latest version, after all, it’s pretty easy to do nowadays, nothing like trying to get the best life insurance on the market huh. All you need to do is go to Tools and click Upgrade and off you go.

Kids have it so easy nowadays huh?

WordPress 2.9 Beta 2

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61/365

WordPress 2.9 Beta 2 has just been made available and I’ve rolled it out to this blog. Here’s what we know about it:

WordPress 2.9 is currently in beta and is expected to be ready in several weeks.

Major new features for developers:
- comments meta table
- improved support for custom post types
- register_theme_directory() for additional theme locations
- back-ported JSON encode/decode for both PHP and JavaScript

and for users:
- oEmbed support
- “Trash” for posts, pages and comments
- post thumbnails support
- basic image editor

I’ve deployed it on this blog and it seems to be running really nicely. I look forward to having a play with it and reporting what I find. It beats looking around the web for medical coding training courses doesn’t it?

WordPress is a winner

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It’s great to see that WordPress has had an amazing run at the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. It came first in the Overall Award and 2nd in the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category. Drupal won the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category award, but then it does have a pretty avid following (you know, like the guys who spend more on car accessories than on the car itself). You can read more about it down on the WordPress blog

Personally I’ve used WordPress extensively and poked around with Joomla and Drupal. I would consider WordPress superior in every way, but part of that is because of my comfort around it. Still, it’s nice to see it winning award.

Core Contributors to WordPress

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Here’s a great photo:

It’s a group of people who are hugely responsible for the way WordPress looks and works today. These people have been critical to shaping WordPress and it’s thanks to their determination and hard work that we have this amazing blogging engine that is as lean and mean as it is today (with no appetite suppressants in sight).

The photo was taken at WordCamp NYC, which from what I hear was a great event. Anyway, thanks guys for making WordPress our pride and joy, as I’m sure it is yours.

Found any bugs yet?

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Well, the November bug hunt has finally kicked off and if you were thinking of taking part then there’s not much time left. Unfortunately I just don’t have the bandwidth to take part, the twins have really sucked away any free time I had and I have a huge pile of things that are in my to do list.

I am looking forward to the new version of WordPress (2.9) being released soon, and thanks to the one-click upgrade it should be relatively easy to roll it out to my blogs. No more uploading or looking for disk mounts. Just one click and away we go.

Go find some bugs

Learning WordPress: Visit a WordCamp

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One of the best way to develop your WordPress skills is to meet and share ideas with other WordPress fans. And there’s no better way to do this than to take some time out and visit a WordCamp. There are 6 happening before the end of the year which are the following:

  • WordCamp Pheonix
  • Wordcamp Victoria
  • Wordcamp Bangkok
  • Wordcamp new York City
  • Wordcamp Peru
  • Wordcamp Orlando

If one of those is anywhere near you, then take the opportunity and go and meet some fellow WordPress afficianadoes. I’ve never managed to attend one of them, but I do plan to one day. There are a number of conferences and exhibitions around the UK, ones on parties, ones on modern furniture, and there’s even a Wordcamp UK. Guess which one I’ll go to if I get a choice …

Read more about the upcoming Wordcamps here

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Get on a bug hunt

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If you have time to spare in the next couple of weeks, you might be able to contribute in one of the upcoming bug hunts. They’re an important step in the WordPress release cycle, where a final push is made to identify and resolve some final bugs before the next version of WordPress is unleashes on the world.

There’s more information down on the WordPress blog and if you can help, it’s a better way to thank your fellow WordPress users than sending christmas cards to everyone you know.

Who would have known that a bug hunt could be so much fun!

PostBot for Android

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Here’s a great application to know about if your phone runs on the Google Android operating system (just like my HTC Magic). It’s called postbot and it’s an Android application that lets you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your Android phone. It works both on WordPress.com blogs as well as self-hosted ones. So, it doesn’t matter if you have a business blog or one with reviews of the Blue Cross North Carolina, the application will allow you to post to your blog from anywhere in the world; as long as you have a data connection of course.

WordPress for iPhone

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Here’s a great application to know about if you’re an iPhone user. It’s the WordPress for iPhone application and it’s the only iPhone app that lets you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. It works both on WordPress.com blogs as well as self-hosted ones. So, it doesn’t matter if you have a business blog or one with reviews of the best weight loss pills, the application will allow you to post to your blog from anywhere in the world; as long as you have a data connection of course.