WordPress.org

We conducted a small poll recently, where we asked WordPress users the method they use to post content to their blogs. The poll is now closed and here are the results of the poll.

And the winner and best way to post content to your blog is the WordPress Dashboard Write Panel, coming in a distant 2nd is desktop applications like Windows Live Writer.

So why do people prefer using the write panel? There could be several reasons for this, the most important one I can think of is that, when writing posts using the write panel users have access to the features plugins provide them with.

Another reason I think is not many users may be aware of the availability of desktop applications for blogging. Also many people may really feel comfortable blogging using the write panel too.

On the other hand desktop applications like WLW do provide users with a familiar interface and the flexibility to blog from their desktops.

What are your views on this poll results? Do let me know.

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Best Method To Post Content To WordPress

bbPress 1.0 final, finally released: For those of us that are also fans and users of bbPress, bbPress version 1.0 is finally released. Many improvements over the 0.9 versions include cookie integration with WordPress, various fixes, JQuery integration, a complete XML-RPC API, new admin interface, new icons, improved spam management and much more. Backup files and database and disable all plugins prior to upgrade but our test upgrade went amazingly well and everything continued to work post upgrade.

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bbPress 1.0 Bechet Released

New Plugins

External Files

External Files provides a shortcode [external] that wraps around a file path or url. The contents of the file/url are imported and outputted in an xhtml-friendly way. What’s more, the plugin auto-guesses the syntax of the file (by looking at the extension of the path or the content-type of the url).

RSS Shortcode

Allows you to embed an RSS feed in your blog post by using WordPress shortcodes.

BuddyPress Contents

BuddyPress content aggregation and organization.

Real-Time Find and Replace

Set up find and replace rules that are executed AFTER a page is generated by WordPress, but BEFORE it is sent to a user’s browser.

Supr by StumbleUpon

Su.pr is the only URL shortener that gets you more traffic and save time posting to Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

Updated Plugins

Shorten2Ping

Sends status updates to Ping.fm or Twitter everytime you publish a post. Using Bit.ly or Tr.im for the permalinks (accounts on these services required). So this way you can send status to many sites at once if you have a Ping.fm account.

Meebo Me

meebo me lets you chat with your site visitors using your Meebo account. Visitors on your blog can hit a simple button and chat with you when you are logged into meebo. This is an easy and free way to interact with your visitors.

GD Star Rating

GD Star Rating is post, page and comment rating and review plugin for WordPress. Plugin supports different image sets, rating moderation, vote rules, time restricted voting, templates, trend calculations, multi ratings, templated rendering, has a widgets build in and extensive shortcode support. Plugin can be integrated with comments for making a review website.

WordPress Console

An interactive console for WordPress developers

Flickr + Highslide

This plugin displays flickr photos using highslide.

Easy AdSense

Easy AdSense manages all aspects of Google AdSense for your blog: insert ads into posts and sidebar, and add a Google Search box.

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WordPress Plugin Releases for 07/03

That’s right, bbPress 1.0 finally hits the tubes!

After many months in alpha, beta and release candidate status, bbPress 1.0 final is now available for download.

Thanks to the many testers who contributed so much important feedback during the pre-release period, going way back to 1.0 alpha 1.

This release offers many usability improvements, based on making bbPress more approachable for adopters who are accustomed to WordPress. To that end bbPress 1.0 now has a similar administration interface to WordPress and uses similar descriptions and names where appropriate. bbPress also behaves more like WordPress when it comes to things like automatically generating your .htaccess file when setting up permalinks.

Here are a few of the improvements over the 0.9 series:

• “Voices” count on topics reports the number of individuals participating in a conversation
• Native support for cookie integration (single sign-on) with Wordpress 2.7 and 2.8
• Optional support for memcached object caching
• Time-zone and Daylight Savings time support
• A complete XML-RPC publishing API
• Pingback support – each topic can receive pingbacks, just like a blog post
• All javascript has been moved to jQuery
• Optionally allow login via email address as well as username
• New meta API allows arbitrary meta data to be stored for posts, topics, forums, options, tags or even meta (that’s right, meta-meta – first legitimate use wins a prize)!
• Display names used primarily for user identification display, which allows special characters to be used
• Themes can now have a “functions.php” file, which is automatically loaded
• Accessibility improvements on forms and in the default theme, including WAI-ARIA roles
• Major overhaul of the admin interface
• Optional Akismet statistics page
• Cute new icons from Ben Dunkle (pictured above)
• Improved use of posts admin to manage spam
• Prettier Kakumei (default) theme
• Hello Louie! Plugin

If you are upgrading from any earlier release to 1.0 then you absolutely should backup all you files and database before doing so. You also may need to make minor adjustments to your templates. Before upgrading, disable all plugins.

Dedication

bbPress 1.0 is named “Bechet” (pronounced beh-shay) after the pioneering jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet.

WordPress provides users with various ways to post content to their blogs, the best part is that it does not limit users to write their views.

However we all use different methods to post content to our blog and it would be interesting to know which is the most used way to post content to a WordPress blog.

Here is a short poll, please choose the method you use frequently to post content to your blog, you can select more than one options, also don’t forget to tell us why you use a certain method to post content to your blog.

This poll requires JavaScript, please visit the website to vote

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How Do You Post Content To Your Blog?

I’ve recently noticed some posts on the BuddyPress forums where people are having problems getting WordPress MU and BuddyPress running locally on their machine.

I spent some time today to put together a twenty minute video that will show you how to set up and run WordPress MU and BuddyPress locally on a Mac. There is a tool you can use that will make this very easy called MAMP. For those of you running Windows, there is a similar tool called WAMP that will basically do the same thing.

I also make use of Textmate in this screen cast to edit the hosts file, if you don’t use it you can simply open the Finder, use the “Go” menu, and then the “Go to folder” option. Enter /etc/ as the folder and then scroll to the “hosts” file and use the editor of your choice. If you are familiar with the terminal you can also use your command line editor of choice.

I highly recommend you turn on the HD option for this video and make it full screen, that way you’ll easily be able to read and follow along.

This year at WordCamp San Francisco I gave a presentation on BuddyPress entitled “Cooking WIth BuddyPress”. The idea was to answer three questions:

1. What is BuddyPress?
2. Why should I use BuddyPress?
3. How do I skin and extend BuddyPress?

The presentation was aimed at both non-technical and technical people and should provide you with a better understanding of what the project is, and it’s potential.

Live Web, Real Time . . . Call It What You Will, It’s Gonna Take A While To Get It. Excellent article by Mary Hodder.

Velocity and the Bottom Line. How performance touches everything on the web, and includes a quote from me about the importance if of speed to the user experience. You can check out my whole presentation, the Moral Philosophy of Performance, on Blip.

There is finally an official answer to the question of whether or not WordPress themes must “inherit” the GPL license that WordPress itself uses. Matt asked the Software Freedom Law Center to examine the WordPress source and how themes fit in. The final, official answer to whether themes must be GPL? Yes and no.

As many people have theorized before (myself included), the PHP files in a theme fall under GPL because they are reliant on the main WP codebase in order to function. The CSS, images, and javascript, however, are separate works which can stand on their own in other contexts, and therefore can be licensed however their creator wishes.

The Theme Repository at WordPress.org will only host themes that are fully compliant with the GPL. But they do now now have a directory of other sites which provide “commercially supported GPL themes“. I expect that the combination of the license clarification and the commercial directory listings will stir a lot of new buzz in the WordPress theming communities.

I imagine we’ll start seeing a lot of “free, basic” themes, with “premium” child themes that add fancier styling and javascript features [note: no "child theme" page in the Codex? Really?]. Another business model that commercial theme developers might consider trying is the “hostage-ware” model. This is where you only release the product after you receive $X in “donations” (see Kickstarter for an example of a service built on this idea, in a meta sort of way). However, I’m positive that we’ll also continue to see plenty of wonderful themes which are fully free (in both the “beer” and “speech” senses).

If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’s license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

Matt,

You asked the Software Freedom Law Center to clarify the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, a content management software package written in PHP and licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

We examined release candidate 1 of WordPress 2.8, which you provided to us at http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8-RC1.tar.gz. The “classic” and “default” themes included in that release candidate comprise various PHP and CSS files along with an optional directory of images. The PHP files contain a mix of HTML markup and PHP calls to
WordPress functions. There is some programmatic logic in the PHP code, including loops and conditionals.

When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP’s include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client.

On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

In the WordPress themes, CSS files and images exist purely as data to be served by a web server. WordPress itself ignores these files[1]. The CSS and image files are simply read by the server as data and delivered verbatim to the user, avoiding the WordPress instance altogether. The CSS and images could easily be used with a range of HTML documents and read and displayed by a variety of software having no relation to WordPress. As such, these files are separate works from the WordPress code itself.

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.

HTML elements are intermingled with PHP in the two themes presented. These snippets of HTML interspersed with PHP throughout the theme PHP files together form a work whose form is highly dependent on the PHP and thus derivative of it.

In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress’s copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center

[1] There is one exception. WordPress does reads CSS and image files to create previews of templates for the template selection portion of the administrative interface. Even in that case, though, nothing in those files calls any WordPress functions, is treated as a command by PHP, or alters any other WordPress data structure. These files are read as data and used to create an image and display a miniaturized version of a webpage to the user.

Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

The Official WordPress Commercial Theme Directory is now open. It is linked off the WordPress Extend and is part of the parent theme directory set of links. It is not as much a directory as it is a listing of sites that offer commercial GPL themes. It lists the philosophies, a few words about the business models and the need for the encouragement, a list of screenshots and links to the various theme sites and then a list of criterion for inclusion into this site.

I like the succinct explanation of the purpose and the listing criterion seem simple and straightforward to follow. Send your information to themes at wordpress dot org to get included in the list. From the site, if you want to be included:

• Distribute 100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.
• Have professional support options, and optionally customization.
• Your site should be complete, well-designed, up to date, and professional looking.
• Include a haiku about yourself to be included.

I am not sure how long this list is going to get, but I am curious to see how this page evolves. I am also glad to see a larger number of GPL based Premium theme vendors on there than I was initially surmising. Cool!

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Official WordPress Commercial Theme Directory is live

If you aren’t already following along, I highly recommend checking out the How To Create A WordPress Theme tutorial series by Ian Stewart (ThemeShaper.com). This 12-part series (8 complete at the time of this writing) aims to take you from nothing to a fully functional, semantically rich, flexible WordPress theme in digestible chunks. Along the way, Ian describes the changes being made, and why you are making them. In this way, you can gain a basic understanding of the roles of the various theme template files, and the code contained within them.

The lesson is broken down thusly:

1. Introduction
2. Theme Development Tools
3. Creating a Theme HTML Structure
4. Template and Directory Structure
5. The Header Template
6. The Index Template
7. The Single Post, Post Attachment, & 404 Templates
8. The Comments Template
9. The Search Template & The Page Template
10. The Archive, Author, Category & Tags Template
11. The Sidebar Template
12. Reset-Rebuild Theme CSS & Define Your Layouts

If you’ve ever thought about creating your own theme, but felt like the task was too big to tackle, this series of articles is for you. It’s a great bit of instruction that will introduce you to the core pieces of WordPress theming without overwhelming you or trying to cram too much into a single article.

Props, Ian!

Magloss

Magloss is a magazine style WordPress theme packed with fully customized features. This 3 columns WordPress theme has integrated JonDesign’s SmoothGallery 2.0 for the rotating featured content. This theme also comes with an automatic thumbnail cropping feature for your front page posts. Besides the rotating featured content, this theme also enables you to use the category block feature to display recent posts for each category chosen. All these features are controllable inside the admin panel (Magloss Theme Option). Magloss is also comes ready with Twitter, Feedburner, 125×125 advertisement banners, adsense and featured videos. All you have to do is insert the appropriate html code within the theme option.

GreenTweet

Three column, widget ready theme with a big twitter icon, 125×125 ad support and page management for links in the top navigation.

Vina

Two column layout, widget ready, with features to auto-grab and resize images on the fly and compatible with WordPress 2.8

Omicron

Three column, gravatar ready, SEO friendly theme with custom 404 template. (page not in English)

Are you a theme author? Submit your theme to get listed here

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WordPress Theme Releases for 07/01

New Plugins

AVH Themed By Browser

The AVH Themed By Browser plugin gives you the ability to set a correlation between browser and theme. The theme of your blog can change dynamically based on the browser the visitor is using.

Follow My Links

Follow My Links is a very simple plugin that prevents WordPress from automaticaly adding a “rel=nofollow” attribute to links in the post authors URL and comments.

YOURLS: WordPress to Twitter

This plugin is the bridge between YOURLS, Twitter and your blog: when you publish a post or a page, it will use your own YOURLS install, either hosted on the same webserver, or another server, to create a short URL for your post and send it to your Twitter account.

Sliding Panel

It is a panel that can be opened and closed with a click of a mouse that will allow you to house additional content on your site without it getting in the way.

Injection attack protector

Protects a list of web pages and files that are likely to be targeted by injection attack by restoring files from local backup whenever they are modified.

Single Post Template

Single Post Template gives you the ability to create and use “Post Templates” in much the same way you create and use “Page Templates” in WordPress.

GeoSmart

GeoSmart is a plugin for WordPress which allows you to determine where in the world the people who comment on your posts are located based on their IP addresses.

Updated Plugins

SEO Ultimate

This SEO plugin can rewrite title tags, noindex archives, edit meta data, and insert “link rel canonical” tags. Version 0.4 adds a 404 logger.

GD Press Tools

GD Press Tools is a collection of various administration, seo, maintenance and security related tools. This tools can be integrated into the various WordPress admin panels, can perform maintenance operations, change some aspects of WordPress, see detailed server settings and information.

Related Websites

Related Websites is a cloud based traffic exchange. Readers interested in additional reading are presented related posts from other blogs. Your posts are presented on other blogs when related. Balancing the exchange is traffic based.

Twitter Hash Tag Widget

A widget for displaying the most recent twitter status updates for a particular hash tag.

Transpose Email

Transpose Email plugin allows you to use JavaScript to create an encoded link. Clicking that link will trigger the user’s email client to open and create an email.

Shadowbox JS

Shadowbox is an online media viewing application that supports all of the web’s most popular media publishing formats.

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WordPress Plugin Releases for 06/30

WordPress Configuration Tricks : If you have ever installed WordPress and wanted to know what else you could do with your wp-config.php file, this is the blog post to read. As Ozh points out in the comments, a couple of tricks were left out but nothing that could not be remedied with a simple Google search (e.g. WP_HTTP) as long as you know what you are looking for.

Tips from that page that got me thinking (things that make you go hmmmmm?) include moving your wp-content directory, increasing your memory limit, changing the autosave interval, turning on debugging and finally the ability to specify a log file for errors. All of this through the wondrous wp-config.php file. The list is quite exhaustive.

While you are there, make sure you subscribe to the blog. Chris and Jeff are putting out some good stuff!

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WordPress Configuration Tricks

Dev4Press has done some interesting work on benchmarking various aspects of WordPress and then testing out some popular questions on page loads etc. The methodologies are well documented and the benchmarking setup is standardized. They are testing three version of WordPress including 2.6.5, 2.7.1 and 2.8 (I wish they would have waited for 2.8.1 to be released). This first set of tests were performed on the WordPress admin interface and other benchmarks will follow. While the quantities are not as important, I think the trends are interesting. Though not independently confirmed, the growing girth of the admin interface is obvious. In contrast, my test WordPress 2.8.1 blog has shown marked improvements in load times and memory usage as compared to WordPress 2.8. It will be interesting to see how the load and memory usage trends of the WordPress admin interface change with future versions as the WordPress team turns their attention towards optimizing the admin panel under the hood. (as Matt has said in many of his State of the Word addresses) via @weblogtooltips

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Benchmarking the WordPress Admin Panel

Scoble: Real-time systems hurting long-term knowledge?

Hanging

In Greens and Browns this theme has a healthy balance of color with the main content area a very clear two column layout with a light background.

Vina

Vina is unique layout and auto grabbed image, multi widget, threaded comment and many more

Freshmade Software

A software company styled theme in light colors of white, orange and brown. Supporting widgets and nested comments.

FancyPress

2 columns, fixed width, widget ready theme

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WordPress Theme Releases for 06/28

Live Streaming video from WordCamp Dallas thanks to Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv. Thanks to WPTavern for the link.

I was at WordCamp Dallas last year but could not make it to this one. I am jealous!

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Live Stream and Chat from WordCamp Dallas