I just received an email that our application to the Google Summer of Code has been accepted!
Summer Starts Early Again For WordPress with GSoC
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Category Archives: WordPress
Site Maps, SEO Alchemy?
A site map seems like a really good idea, but if WordPress is on your team, you are already in great shape, and they offer no real benefit.
I’m Biased, But Try Movable Type and Drupal
Anil Dash has written an article titled “A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide” on the official movabletype.com blog. It is full of misdirection, and, thankfully, overall it hasn’t been well received. What excites me is it has sparked some excellent discussions, and it’s a great launching point for more conversations.
I whole heartily recommend you try the open source flavor of Movable Type. It is clearly a great product created by fantastic people.
If you are thinking you only have time to try one other blogging software than WordPress, my time and money is on Drupal. People bringing Drupal into the conversation as an alternative has been one of my favorite parts of the discussions. Built on the same PHP stack that powers WordPress and much of the rest of the high performance web. Drupal is the full featured CMS with the heart and minds of the open source communities (I hang out with). Its blogging experience isn’t as polished out of the box as WP or MT, but it’s getting there — and we’re working hard at staying focused and one step ahead of them 
If you have time please do share what you love about these other personal publishing environment, particularly if it relates to something that annoys you about WordPress. This way WordPress participants can respond by letting our code do the talking.
If you are currently using WordPress then your highest priority will likely be to plan to take a look at WordPress 2.5 as a release candidate will be coming very soon — watch the WordPress Development blog for the news.
WordPress Google Summer of Code 2
The Google Summer of Code is here again. I submitted our WordPress application today. Last year was awesome, and I think this year will be even way better!
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Media Library and WordPress Plugin Challenge
WordPress 2.5 will be the first release with more than a rudimentary image and media experience right out of the box. There are now add media buttons in the editor, the manage menu includes media library, and there is a gallery.
Surfin’ WordPress 2.5 with Safari 3
With the release of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), the simple, elegant, fast web browser Safari 3 is here.
Very soon we will release WordPress 2.5, and about the same time WordPress.com will be updated.
With Safari 3 and WordPress 2.5 you should finally have a great experience if Safari is your preferred browser.
Matt Thomas Put Under the Press, WordPress 2.5 That Is
Matt Thomas, our brilliant web designer on team Automattic, has been very busy working on WordPress 2.5 .
Jacob Santos, “I’ll provide a patch after I graduate”
“Sorry, I’ll provide a patch after I graduate. I don’t have the time at the moment.” writes Jacob Santos aka darkdragon, in WordPress bug ticket #5860 Activating plugin that uses upgrade functions (dbDelta) fails , and I think he was serious. Reading that put a big smile on my face!
Embedding YouTube in WordPress Bug
Nancy White is the first person to add a specific problems for tomorrow’s WordPress and your Problems. Her problem is:
embedding youtube – I know to turn off WYSIWYG but is there an easier way?
WordPress and your Problems at MooseCamp!
Bloggers and problems enter, only bloggers exit!
Friday, Feb 22, day 1 of the 4th annual Northern Voice including an “internet bootcamp” for people new to blogging, Facebook, podcasting, wikis, and more. It is an awesome logging conference being held again at the Forestry Sciences Centre at UBC! It’s Tim Bray’s “favorite little blogger conclave.” This conclave is really for everyone, but if you don’t already have a ticket, see you next year.
The other part of day 1 will be the MooseCamp Unconference, the third year of this self-organizing, community from chaos event. The moose are loose and they converge to converse again! Organic and from the hip and with food this year!
Like any good participant in creations from chaos, I’m late in organizing a session — or maybe early because many sessions will be unveiled right at the event. Anyway, over the last week, I’ve been making some virtual calls to WordPress aficionados attending Northern Voice, very modest ones at that, and the result is a dynamic session where we will work together to solve our WordPress problems, WordPress and your Problems.
The plan — plan to change — is for the first half to be spent discussing problems and experiences in small groups and then us all coming together to discuss the groups’ discoveries and some of the problems that still taught us with the whole group.
Hopefully, in the small groups, you will also swap blogging stories and 411.
Some of the small groups could be solving problems related to:
- Getting going on WordPress.com – Richard Eriksson (sightings) also doing the Blogging 101 session of Internet Bootcamp (Podcast of his 2007 session of the same title)
- Setting up WordPress (+ using it for CMS) – Jim Groom (sightings) (notes) brings all his experience on using WordPress MU for the campus-wide blogging initiative at the University of Mary Washington and running WordPress on his personal blog. Saturday with D’Arcy, he is presenting Don’t call it a Blog, Call it an Educational Publishing Platform (NV 2007: with D’Arcy More than just a Blog)
- Beautiful prose and pictures – Rebecca Bollwitt (miss604) (sightings) is a Vancouver blogger, who loves WordPress, and is amoug the best I know for putting together prose and pictures into a tasty post. Or maybe you need some technical help with live blogging. She is a Northern Voice volunteer, and Saturday will be leading the panel Sports Blogging and Podcasting.
- Themes & CSS – you? Could really use a themer or designer to lay down some cascading flavor .
- Plugins – Duane Storey (sightings) author of numerous awesome WordPress plugins including Crossroads Flickr Plugin, CoolExcerpts, WordTwit Twitter, and he is currently working on Viper Cache.
- Messing up the code and contributing to WordPress – me, I guess.
Additional experts on hands:
- Chris “WordPress code is messy” Lott (sightings) and he still likes it! Saturday presenting The Blog is Dead! Long live bloggers (NV 2007: with Darcy Mashups for Non-Programmers and Social Software for Learning Environments [podcast])
- D’Arcy Norman from WordPress to Drupal and back again. (sightings) Saturday with Jim doing, Don’t call it a Blog, Call it an Educational Publishing Platform (NV 2007: with Jim More than just a Blog, with Chris Mashups for Non-Programmers and Social Software for Learning Environments [podcast])
- David Peralty (sightings) Head of Marketing at Splashpress Media, he is a pro blogger, has published over 4000 articles, and contributes to many blogging news. He has also been know to hack up a theme, make multiple loops, and streamline upgrading.
- Lorraine Murphy (sightings) as well as her famous pop culture blog raincoaster.com, she regularly runs Blogging for Beginners course with titles like “From zero to Technorati in 7 hours”. She is also volunteering at Northern Voice. (NV 2007 Stats: The Forbidden Love)
- Joshua McKenty (sightings), founder of BountyUp.com. serial entrepreneur, long-term technologist and amateur WordPress
hacker, he’s had good luck glueing WP and BBpress into other sites,
from Smarty integration to Single-Sign-On (using cookie hacks and SQL
views).
The groups will be formed around your problems. What problem do you need help with? Post a comment here or add to the wiki page.
As I mentioned each of these aficionados is modest — some I had to trick to volunteer — and I bet you are modest too. WordPress is a rich environment, and by sharing your insights with us, you will surprise yourself with your own expertise . You will also be surprised that we have the same problems. Is there an interesting problem that you have solved and can help others solve to?
Depending on where the interest is we will reconfigure the session on the fly.
It won’t be scheduled during Blogging 101 or Photocamp. Any other sessions to avoid butting heads with? I won’t be arriving until Friday morning, because I’m still through mid-April at the Pregnancy Conference and after that I will be at the First Baby Conference for at least a few months. If there is interest some of us can get together later in the day and take a look at WordPress 2.5 which is still in development, but nearing beta quality, but I want this to be focused on solving people’s problems today.
Welcome to the Thunderdome! Bloggers and problems enter, only bloggers exit!
