Remkus de Vries

BuddyPress 1.7 Release Candidate 1 For Your Testing Pleasure

28 March 2013 by Remkus de Vries Leave a Comment

The fine folks working on BuddyPress just released the first RC for BuddyPress 1.7:

BuddyPress 1.7 is going to be one of our most exciting releases to date. It comes packaged with the same theme compatibility that was introduced in bbPress 2.0, which means that BuddyPress will now work out-of-the-box with a majority of the WordPress themes available today.

Make sure you test this release candidate as much as you can because as you know, the 1.7 version is quite an upgrade. For more information, do check out the release post.

Yoast on Why They Don’t Support Old WordPress Versions

12 March 2013 by Remkus de Vries 5 Comments

Joost de Valk posted an interesting article about their support policy the other day. Specifically, about not supporting old WordPress versions. Joost comes to an interesting conclusion:

In short: upgrade. I know some developers out there are saying that we can’t “require” people to upgrade, well, I disagree. He compares it to Apple not forcing you to buy a new Mac when it breaks. The difference there is that we’re not talking about hardware. We’re talking about software. Apple regularly asks you to upgrade your system to fix battery issues or other issues.

Envato Finally Will Allow For 100% GPL Licenses

1 March 2013 by Remkus de Vries Leave a Comment

Envate, source of many GPL ruckus of late, is finally moving forward and allowing their theme and plugin authors to choose a proper 100% GPL license.

After getting this community feedback, we are now putting into the works an optional 100% GPL license which authors in GPL-based categories (such as WordPress or Drupal) can make use of. It will be completely up to authors whether they use this option. The new option should be available towards the end of March, and we’ll be posting on Notes about how authors can make use of it.

Current State of the WordPress Theme Marketplace

28 February 2013 by Remkus de Vries 1 Comment

Over at WPShout Alex Denning wrote a nice piece on what he calls “An Economist’s Look: Competition in the WordPress Theme Marketplace”. Or in other words:

That thought process has lead me to this post, where I’m going to run you through the current state of the marketplace, what impact that has and what that means for consumers.

Alex comes to the following conclusion: [Read more…] about Current State of the WordPress Theme Marketplace

Introducing Twenty Thirteen

19 February 2013 by Remkus de Vries 17 Comments

Mark Jaquith, over at the make.wordpress.core site, introduced the new default WordPress theme to be introduced in WordPress 3.6. Twenty Thirteen looks like nothing you’ve ever seen in a default WordPress theme and to be honest, I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

I am aware that what we see now is just an early rendition, – love the colors, don’t like it being boxed on my 27″ iMac – but I’m not sure what to think about the general direction here. It’s geared towards Post Formats, for which the UI will be revamped in 3.6, and I’m not sure that is the direction a default theme should be headed. Why? [Read more…] about Introducing Twenty Thirteen

BuddyPress 1.7 Comes With Shiny New Features

11 February 2013 by Remkus de Vries 7 Comments

Over WPMU.org Sarah Gooding blogs about a few nice features that the forthcoming 1.7 version of BuddyPress will bring to the table. If you’re a BuddyPress fiend than do check out her article. Only thing I wished she’d worded differently is the mention of the Group Forums disappearing because they’re not.

BuddyPress itself will stop shipping the old stand-alone version of bbPress (which powered the old forums), but instead BuddyPress 1.7 relies on the bbPress plugin entirely for the forums. So they’re not going anywhere, you just need to switch to bbPress for the most awesomest forum experience. [Read more…] about BuddyPress 1.7 Comes With Shiny New Features

Scott Taylor on Understanding MySQL in WordPress

10 February 2013 by Remkus de Vries 2 Comments

Scott Taylor posted a very detailed write up about understanding MySQL in WordPress. Something I personally think every single WordPress developer – be it plugins or themes – ought to have a deep understanding of. Not just know of it’s existence. In Scott’s words:

You would be surprised how many people I have interviewed for a job that think their PHP chops are great, but their MySQL, not so much. Many great WordPress developers I know have said the same thing. Not cool. Bad SQL can bring down your site! Forget crazy scaling challenges, basic WP Query usage can bring your site down if you aren’t careful. WordPress is a framework that provides you with a lot out of the box, but you are still going to end up writing a bunch of your own PHP to make it work the way you want. The same should be true, but often isn’t, for SQL queries.