It’s become pretty standard for WordCamps to have a hack day, or a developer day, following a day or two of conference activity. The most notable of these is the Developer Hack Day that follows WordCamp San Francisco. The idea is that WordPress people get together to work on WordPress core – this could be on tickets, bugs, or developing features. Developers hang out with their laptops, drink coffee, eat, and hack. [Read more…] about What’s in a Name? Moving Beyond Hack Days
WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” is Alive!
We’ve been expecting WordPress 3.5 since 5th December, and finally, it’s out: WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” ! The past week has seen the core team working furiously to get it ready. Just take a look at the IRC logs to see how hard they have worked.
The latest version of WordPress has loads of new features:
- Gallery management module for better image and gallery management
- Better image upload
- All media is ready for retina displays
- Core now ships with the default Twenty Twelve theme
- The Link manager has been hidden
- Major improvements to accessibility
You can check out all of the changes on the Codex Version 3.5 page.
Congrats to Nacin and Koop, and the rest of the core team, all of whom have worked so hard over the past few months.
The Very First WordPress Mid-Week Codex Sprint
One of the many great things about having a date for a WordPress release in advance, is that other teams can plan activities around it. On the Support blog, Mika has started discussions around her ZOMG! WordPress Updates Broke Me! post. And on the docs blog we’re planning a Codex updating sprint after the launch of WordPress 3.5.
A Codex Sprint?
A documentation sprint is basically when a bunch of people get together to update documentation. Here are some examples of other doc sprints:
- Confluence
- Mozilla
- Web Platform
- Start: Thursday 6th December – 3pm UTC
- End: Friday 7th December – 5pm UTC
- Where: IRC freenode #wordpress-sfd (web chat)
They can be focused on specific areas, or just a general push to get documentation out or updated. For the first WordPress Codex sprint we’ll be updating the Codex to get everything in line with WordPress 3.5.
When, Where and How?
You can find the details on the docs blog, but the important things to remember are:
You can get involved at any point during those times – no one needs to be there for 26 hours!
Automattic goes head-to-head with happytables
We’ve all noticed Automattic launch its recent sites targeted at verticals such as cities, weddings and music, so it’s no surprise to anyone that they just launched WordPress.com Restaurants. This puts them in direct competition with happytables, the restaurant web app created by our own Noel Tock. WordPress.com restaurants offers menus, maps, and reservations, provides users with a mobile version of the website, as well as all of the usual good stuff from WordPress.com. [Read more…] about Automattic goes head-to-head with happytables
BuddyCamp Vancouver Report
After landing on the moon, the creation of the internet, and The Matrix hitting theaters, BuddyCamp Vancouver is pretty much mankind’s greatest achievement. In less then four years BuddyPress has evolved to the point where it can be at the center of two full days of awesomeness. 18 speakers, three BuddyPress core developers, the co-founder of WordPress, and a whole bunch of others where there to witness the magic.
Before you continue reading, please take a few seconds to thank the people that have made this possible. Y’all know who they are! [Read more…] about BuddyCamp Vancouver Report
Debugging Tips for WordPress
Recently I’ve had several discussions with colleagues asking me for the debugging practices that I use. I try to constantly enhance my workflow, resources and improve the quality of my work by speeding up the process of narrowing down the possible reasons for a bug or a feature limitation. Speaking WordPress-wise, I’ll list a couple of things that I consider important. Some of them are more than obvious, but somehow people misuse them or forget about them at a moment of crisis (so to speak).
Before you start: always do backups. Debug your web application locally, test properly and ensure that everything is on set before deploying to the real server. Best practices teach that a local server -> staging/dev server -> production server is a good setup to prevent the obvious error of hitting the live website.
Is There Life Beyond WordPress?
Jason Schuller, of Press75 fame, has posted his thoughts on life beyond WordPress. Two paragraphs that stick out:
For me, WordPress has become what used to be that “tiny cubicle” back in 2007. I feel trapped by something that is heading in a direction that I’m finding harder and harder to align my ideas of what a website solution should be.
and
My issues with WordPress stem from how complex and bloated it has become over the last few years. WordPress used to be this “charming” little piece of software that had you at “hello”. Now that all simplicity has been left behind in versions past, WordPress seems to be void of any personality. It no longer has any specific purpose or individuality that sets it apart from the rest, and that’s where I am lost.
It looks to me that if you add Jason’s post to John O’Nolan’s Ghost concept and Tony Perez’s post on WordPress commercialization, we seem to have a trend here.