A lot of features are discussed for the new default theme for WordPress version 3. I’m using a theme base which I rolled together over the years, based off of Classic (of all things!). It’s a quick and easy and customizable way for me to deploy a site and focus on the CSS, as I believe in my document structure. My aversion to other people’s code comes with its drawback: I totally missed the bus when it came and picked up the is_singular conditional function, and I also consider leading post images as used by so many bloggers to be distracting and irrelevant, but that’s me.

A lot of the focus on Twentyten is on new features such as WooThemes navigation (which is available for all, if you know what you’re doing). Aaron Brazell recommends child-theming Twentyten, which is not a bad idea, but I think there is room for improvement in the final. I’m writing this because it’s an Alpha version, and there’s still time for someone with the PHP knowhow to do this.

Twentyten uses conditional logic in loop.php that references Category names such as Asides and Gallery. Not a bad idea, except the installation does not populate those Categories. I’m certain that there can be safeguards to overwriting existing categories when this happens for an upgrade, but if you’re going to take dibs on category names, at least populate those names or have a friendly (yellow) reminder up top that tells users “in order to make the most out of your theme, please create categories with the following names: Asides, Category, YourMomsKnickers.”
This is what I talk about when I discuss “thoughtful theming” in casual conversation.

I don’t know how to commit these suggestions or if it will even be an idea well-received, but it’s definitely worth thinking about.

In matters of criminal investigation, intent can be proven by certain actions. However, in these cases, there is a jury to be convinced and a victim to be vindicated. Thankfully, when it comes to disputes in the tech community, one need not try to prove intentions through actions. One need only ask. Following the remarks from yesterday’s WordCamp Atlanta, where a trial balloon was placed in front of the world—this is the internet; everything local is global—about “canonical” or “endorsed” or “core” plugins, I must ask the WordPress lead devs, all the way up to Matt himself: why?

I’m not a plugin developer, nor a theme developer, or a pure front-end designer. I honestly don’t know what to label the gestalt of my skills, but I do good work. Part of that good work is being able to select which plugins work for my project requirements. While I truly appreciate the good intentions of the WordPress leadership in bundling plugins together and endorsing them, but I have my fears on its effects on the plugin marketplace.

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One of my clients told me about an email they received from Technorati. This is about a security flaw in versions prior to 2.5. I have kept her running on a legacy 2.0.x branch because of some custom queries in the blogrolls that would totally break if it were merely upgraded.

I posted a topic on the support forums to see if this issue from Technorati has been addressed. I don’t think it will matter: Technorati will play it safe and I doubt anything that the WP devs tell ‘em will change their minds. Well and fine, but what a way to force an upgrade, eh?

If I ever designed your blog, or set up WordPress for you, and you still need my help upgrading, please drop me a line and I’ll try to get you in line as soon as everyone else ahead of you is done. I’m busy until late next week, unfortunately.

I’ve installed the Sandbox Theme on which I will redesign my site and get it up to speed for WP v2.3.

Yup. I give up. I’m going with a pre-packaged theme for the codebase and I’ll be redesiging my site. So much for keeping this for a year, ey? The old theme will be around for a little bit while I study Sandbox but something new will show up soon enough.

Something far, far less minimalistic.

UPDATE:  FORGET SANDBOX, I just did a diff between v2.2.2 and v2.3 of the pea-green “classic” look and it’s updated. MY GOD they update it! Damned sandbox stuff is much damned work…

With the release of Wordpress version 2.3, tagging has been finally integrated into the core functionality of the platform.

Not a bad idea, if your blog generally has fewer words and more photos. I am well aware of its usefulness in flickr, fergodssakes, but tagging posts with the very same words that are used in the body text of said posts?

Maybe I’m not “web 2.0″ enough. Maybe, with my four years of blogging, I’m turning into a luddite. What exactly is the benefit of a tag on a text-based post? The fact that posts could be assigned to multiple categories was a pretty awesome thing, because topics do overlap. But tags?

BUT TAGS?

TAGS?

No doubt, I’ll have to get into it and understand it if I want to continue relating to the needs of the people for whom I maintain Wordpress-based sites, but on my site? When I do upgrade to version 2.3, you can expect tags on photo-based posts.

Mkay?

I have had an itch to participate more into Wordpress’ development path at least from a designer’s point of view; while my work over the past five months has made me less accessible than the Pope himself—as stated quite matter-of-factly by a friend tonight—I find the need to keep up to date.

Hey, when you’re generally designing on the web with a single blogging platform in mind, you really need to stay ahead of the curve. Besides, there is always Sandbox, which is also widgets-friendly, but updating my theme? Ugh. I thought it would be a pain in the ass, to the point that I didn’t even bother doing it, until I saw Hemmed, which from what I grok is Widget-friendly.

Well and good, because for the average Joe for whom I will design, there will be a need for them to update their sidebar content and with my time not being on my side, a Widget-friendly framework would be perfect for them to update their stuff.

Now that my personal time is a bit more available since my schedule is basically set to something quite regular, I should probably just play around and try something new with this Sandbox thing. It’ll serve my future customers better. I wonder what I’ll come up with next?

I’ve been hacking around with the Wordpress conditional tags and I’ve started to get the hang of it. However, I have never really known much of PHP programming and I don’t know jack about the syntax at all. I’ve spent too much time aping existing code’s syntax and this inquiring mind would like a hand-out of definitive info once and for all. I’ll be using a few shortcuts with syntax but I hope I can be understood anyway.

First, we have the conditional. Is there an important difference between the following two examples?

< ?php if (condition) : ?> [HTML Output] < ?php endif; ?>

< ?php if (condition) { ?> [HTML Output] < ?php } ?>

Wordpress also has a conditional function to determine a page by ID or by slug. For example: < ?php is_page('about-the-author') ?> indicates code related only to a Page that has the slug of “about the author.” My sidebar file has a chain of “if” statements (only two are shown in the example):

< ?php if ((is_page('about-the-author')) { ?> [HTML Output] < ?php } if ((is_page('colophon')) { ?> [HTML Output] < ?php } ?>

I suppose the syntax is right since it works, but is it good syntax?

I saw this at Meryl’s:

…one of the things preventing me from joining Pajamas Media is that they want full control over my RSS feed, including my only being allowed to send post titles via RSS.

So PJM will offer you money but limit you to sending only post titles in the feeds? Long have I railed at independent content providers—bloggers, yes?—who don’t publish their whole site content because they want people who use feed readers to show up on their sitemeters and add a click to the team. To what end does Pajamas Media want to limit the syndication of a member site’s data? I would like to know, but the fountain from which the benefit of the doubt flows is running low…

I tried adding asides to my site because at first I thought that a three-line entry prefaced by an enormous title and two lines of metadata was ugly until I realized just how naked a post looked like without its window dressing.

Are we really ready for it? Two years ago when I was using B2 I, like many, understood the folly of generating individual HTML files that filled up server hard drive allocations. Later on we saw comment spammers shutting down entire servers by turning the rebuild process against its owners. We also saw hundreds upon hundreds of comments pages littered with so much spam that their owners were not able to stem the tide.

Now, Wordpress, which is not just free but also open source, and under the most open of sources, the GPL, is gaining significant visibility. With the coming of Version 1.6 we are going to see even a lot more websites that use WP not just as a blogging tool but also a site management tool.

We are well aware that security vulnerabilities in WP are corrected ASAP. But are we as a community of WP users prepared for the unprepared-for vulnerability that may arise someday?

I am still and most possibly always will be, an avid supporter of Wordpress, and though there are parallels in terms of distribution and market share, we are not as unprepared as the rest of the developers were two years ago. We shall see, I guess…

Why, this renowned (but not self-proclaimed) WP “guru” needs help of his own. Anyone care to help? I want to move entire masses of posts from one category to another, because I’m about to delete quite a few categories in my taxonomy.

Better yet, a plugin that can do this painlessly would be bonerrific.

Version 1.5.2 is out. Here’s a changelog skimmed from the trac. Also, the security upgrade this morning from Podz is included.