WP Realm

WordPress news, community news, reviews and more from all over the world

More Contributor Groups Move to Make.WordPress.org

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More and more contributor groups are making the move to make.wordpress.org, with the Polyglots and Core groups recently being moved to .org, and the brand new Events group making an appearance. If you want to get involved with contributing to WordPress, make.wordpress.org is place to get started. The contributor groups currently living there are Core, Plugins, UI, Accessibility, Themes, Polyglots, Systems, and Events.

Only a few more to make the move: I’m looking forward to seeing the Codex team and support finding their own room in the make.WordPress.org home.

If you want to learn more about contributing to WordPress, check out the page on the Codex.

WordPress In-Action: CGIAR NGO

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Project Website:

CGIAR

What is the website for?

The website is designed to act as both the main site for the CGIAR NGO, and as a hub for the huge range of content made available by all the consortium members.

The Brief:

The brief was, in effect, this list:

  1. Web design based on the new branding guidelines
  2. Designs for page layouts, style elements, typography, graphical elements
  3. Unify and clearly present the information generated by the various Centres and CRPs
  4. Create a central entry point for visitors to find the main governing bodies of CGIAR
  5. Shift the emphasis from ‘the institution’ to ‘content and research’
  6. Increase the unity of the Centres, CRPs, Fund and Consortium Office through consistent design and branding
  7. Communicate clearly what CGIAR is and what it does

There was, of course, a lot more to it than that and in the meetings that followed we realised that a good responsive design was a must – even if it can be a massive challenge on a complex site. We also knew that widgets had to work flexible – if a widget space was small, the widget should respond to that – responsive within responsive, if you see what I mean. That means the chances of a user putting a widget somewhere and messing up a page is pretty slim, so long as it’s one of our widgets, that is – some plugins have their own ideas!

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WordPress in Your Audience’s Language: Why?

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In today’s software, the default language is usually English, which in turn encourages people outside English speaking countries to start using that software as-is, even when localized versions exist. They simply stick with the English version, since they themselves have grown used to it and the localized version ends up feeling “strange” to them. It comes as no surprise that this applies to WordPress as well. Many site administrators, even though English is not their native language nor do they publish in English, still use the default, English version.

However, a localized version of WordPress has a lot more than meets the eye, i.e. the translation of strings, such as local settings and formatting, a few of which I will present here:

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My Take on BuddyPress

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Over the last few years I have had the chance to work on a many BuddyPress projects. This fantastic tool has an incredible potential, which is often only limited by your imagination. Even if you often meet clients who believe that the only way to create a successful social network is to make a Facebook clone, other times you are challenged by more original clients, who are open to  finding great and innovative ways of creating a strong community around their website.

I have seen how BuddyPress has made huge advances to become what it is now: the best open source tool for creating a social network. Of course, there is still has a lot of work to be done, and I have my personal opinions about BuddyPress’s weak and strong points. This is my first post for WP Realm and, because I love to work with BuddyPress, I am eager to talk about its strengths and potential. But I also want to see it getting better and evolve, and so I will begin by presenting some weaker areas that I’ve encountered and areas to be improved.
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Writing Plugins: Is It Always Worth It?

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Writing code can be boring sometimes, whether you need some new features, but don’t like them or the process itself has somehow become tedious. You cannot focus and you are at a dead-end. The only thing you want is to get this thing working and finish it already. Sometimes what you need to get done is so simple that two lines in your theme’s functions.php file would probably do the trick, and the code for the header of a plugin alone is 10 lines. Why bother coding a plugin at all?

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WordPress Meetup in London

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In my experience WordPress London always has a strong turn out, and not just from London residents either — I myself travel to the event as much as possible.  The format is a talk and pub discussion, which always works well for WordPress meetups.  This month’s event was held at Skills Matter, a great venue with rooms all set up for training.  They provide drinks and there is free wifi – what more could you need!
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This Week in The Realm: Week #25

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Events

WordCamp Curitiba 2012 — 2 days of intensive discussions, presentations and networking, among Brazilian WordPress enthusiasts. The event happened last week-end and the organizers have already submitted an event report, which we will expand and publish next week, right here on WP Realm.

WordPress meetup in Normandy — the french WordPress community is currently discussing a possible meetup in either Rouen or Caen, so if you are in the area, make sure to attend.

Is your community planning meetups or other events? Let us know!

Plugins

bbPress 2.1 Beta 1 — The forums plugin has reached Beta 1, and includes many enhancements and fixes (here’s the list of closed tickets for this release).  The development team is aiming to release bbPress 2.1 by the end of June, based on how the beta period goes. The more help they get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner the final version ships. If you want to help with the translation, it’s right here.
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