Category Archives: WordPress

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

Staticize Reloaded

Gallery, WordPress

The caching plugin I pointed to the other day was very well-executed but it didn’t meet my needs for several reasons, mainly that it cached every bit of output, which wouldn’t be appropiate for things like my random photo. (Or my non-rotating photo formerly known as the random photo in the header. It’s on break right now.) My site is a pretty neat system of PHP includes, and I want to preserve that because it makes my life easy and doesn’t slow anything down any perceptable amount.

So I took the Staticize plugin and added support for dynamic non-cached sections, cleaned up the code a bit, fixed a weird problem where it would just show a blank page if it couldn’t write the file, fixed the problem with edit links and the comment form, and made it fit with the WordPress code a little smoother. Full instructions are included with the plugin, but to install just make sure your wp-content folder is writable (you may have already done that when setting up WP) and activate the plugin, and it will start working immediately.

I have a couple more improvements in mind for it already, but it’s fully functional and I’m running it right now.

Download Staticize Reloaded 2.0.

Mosquito Bites

Travel, WordPress

So it wasn’t even the first day of the bug tracker’s existence when bug notes got rowdy and prompted Shelley to write a post lamenting WordPress developer communication and more. I started to write a reply in the comments, but it got pretty long so I decided to post it here.

Shelley: Different people particpate with the development process at different levels. While I appreciate the point you were trying to communicate, it seems like an inappropiate place to role play a clueless user. (Particularly posting under your own account.) Ryan and I fully realize that the reply would mean very little to someone who didn’t know PHP or diff, but it was a dialogue between you—Shelley Powers the bug reporter who has written several advanced hacks and plugins for WordPress—and a developer who wants to address the problem. Someone else probably would have been treated differently. In the past you have been very indignant when someone assumed you didn’t know something and addressed you at a level you deemed patronizing. In that situation, how is anybunny supposed to respond?

It’s silly for it to come up in the first place. Communication is much more than 50% of successful application, it’s 100% essential because without it the code doesn’t really matter. The project falls in the forest without making any sound. However the bug tracker doesn’t seem like the best place to make this point. If you really feel strongly about this, why not write some guidelines or best practices in the wiki and send a note to the documentation list.

There a thread on the forums which addresses some of this.

Standards Police

Web Standards, WordPress

The Standards Police, I think Keith is totally off here, as I began to express in Dave’s comments. A laissez-faire approach to compliance isn’t helping anyone. Someone needs to set an example, and if it’s not these guys who will? Jeffrey and Doug, each with no small amount of content on their site, seem to have no problem keeping things compliant. Neither does Eric, Tantek, Joe, Lars, Anne, Mark, just to name a few. Don’t tell me “validation is very hard and takes quite a bit of effort.” That’s a weak cop-out. Accessibility is very hard, design is very hard, music is very hard, driving in between the lines is very hard. If you don’t want to make the effort, then don’t dabble and make flippant comments that hurt the field as a whole and insult the people who work “very hard.”

I’m coming out. This site is to the best of my ability valid XHTML 1.1 sent with the proper MIME to browser that can handle it. Even the photolog, which took me hours and hours of work to get to the point where it is now, and for a long time was far from decent markup. However I am fairly certain that there are some comments (particularly on the mosaic thread, which now has almost a thousand replies) that have broken validation, and though I am very busy I will personally check each of these. WordPress helps a lot. The WordPress site is also XHTML 1.1 with the exception of the forums, which are compliant by default (more hours of work) but which could do a much better job of validation input. These are my weaknesses, out for the world to see. Even though the sites work just fine, and “validation doesn’t pay the bills,” I’m going to devote my time to fixing these problems because how can I presume to be a member of an organization devoted to standards without following them myself?

Update: Pulled and republished.

Missed Plugins

WordPress

Question for MT to WP converts: “To those of you who have converted, or who are thinking of converting – what plugin/hack/thing-a-ma-jig did you used to have for MT that you wish you could have now. I think there is very little (if anything at all?!) that I did in MT that couldn’t be done as easily (if not EASIER!) in WordPress. So, while I can’t say I’ll promise to get to everything right away, I’d like to re-create as many tutorials as possible for WordPress.”

WordPress Meetup

Events, WordPress

Wow, this is very exciting—a WordPress meetup! I was just browsing around came across this post on Blogging Pro saying that there is now a WordPress meetup on the fourth saturday of every month. The very first one is coming up on June 26th. Funnily enough though I don’t travel very often it looks like I’m going to be out of town that week. (Any San Francisco WordPress users up for a meetup?) You can bet that I’m going to try and make as many of these as possible. I know at least a few very active WordPress users are in Texas, with developer Ryan Boren in Dallas and a few people in Austin. It would be very neat to have a yearly event where we all got together. BBQ is on me.

Since I last saw it Meetup has gotten some nice enhancements. I’ve been burned at a couple of meetups where I was the only person that showed up. I’ll have to give them another chance.