Category Archives: WordPress

The open source publishing platform I co-founded — development, releases, community, and the ecosystem.

1.3 Cleanup

A few comments about some of the code changes in 1.3. Very nice to see people appreciating some of the hard work we’ve put into this iteration. In a perfect world we could stop the clock and rewrite large portions of the code from scratch, but that would take a long time and break a lot of things in the process. All programmers want to do this, it’s our weakness, but every time I get this urge I think of Netscape and how devastating their rewrite downtime was. We’re making some substantial changes but doing it gradually while introducing new features and responding to users needs.

For example, in 1.3 “the loop” is called very differently but it’s completely backward compatible with everyone’s 1.2 loop code. We deprecate things over time so any structural changes that need to be made come gradually for people upgrading, there’s nothing to drastic every time. This also saves a huge amount of time in support. (Regular users don’t want to have to redo their templates, hackers don’t want to relearn code they already knew.) Same for the new theme system we’re introducing, it adds a lot of flexibility, radically changing how the front end of WordPress operates (like plugins for templates and styles) but all the new stuff is completely optional. I’ve transitioned most of my custom code into a personal “theme” that makse upgrading a lot easier for me (which is good because I do it almost daily).

Next time you get the urge to rewrite from scratch think about the testing your code has gone through, all the edge cases that have already been addressed, the existing installed base, and how many new bugs you’ll introduce with the from-scratch code.

Best and Brightest

The Best and Brightest, Glamorous Life #33. Who says Zeldman gets linked less?

Zeldman has had a profound influence on the way I think about the web. I started taking web craft seriously because of Zeldman. WordPress exists because of Zeldman. I am where I am today because of Jeffrey Zeldman. This isn’t hyperbole, just statement of fact.

I think now is an excellent time for people to take a walk through his archives and highlight their favorite articles, something I’ll do myself at least once a day every day this week. If you’re doing something similar leave a comment so I can follow along. It’ll be interesting to see what people were most influenced by from one of the most influential fathers of today’s web.