Speaking of GPL succeses, WordPress is itself an example of monumental success. All of its developers have something to be immensely proud of. But whenever I am reminded that WordPress is GPL, my passion for it takes a bit of a dive. I’m more comfortable with the true freedom of liberally-licensed products. If a liberally-licensed blog system of equal quality, ease of use, and popularity should appear, my loyalties to WordPress would not last long.
03 July 2009
Daniel Jalkut: GPL Stifles Participation
02 July 2009
Themes are GPL.
Finally, a definitive source on the long talked about issue:
One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.
This matches with what I (and many others) believed so far. Also note that the post says that WordPress.org will only promote 100% GPL or compatible themes, which I assume means that you have to GPL your CSS and images too for your theme to be accepted there.
07 May 2009
110+ WordPress Video Tutorial
Sometimes it’s much easier to learn from a screencast than reading plain text articles. Here’s a list of various video tutorials covering different aspect of WordPress.
06 May 2009
101 Techniques for Powerful CMS using WordPress
Just as it is said on the title. Definitely worth a bookmark.
04 May 2009
Hackers Highlight 3 May 2009
Welcome to the weekly Hackers Highlight, showcasing various interesting information that happened in the last week of WordPress hacker’s mailing list, wp-hackers. You can also follow the mailing list via the Google Group front-end here.
This could be an idea if you wanted to make a new plugin: Eduardo Zulian needed a way to show a huge amount of categories in the write post admin area. Could be really useful for sites using WP as a CMS with a lot of different categories in play.
Here’s a good discussion on WordPress’ accessibility issue. And related with that discussion, Lynne Pope requested the creation of the wp-accessibility mailing list to further discuss and implement better accessibility into WordPress. Quite obviously a great idea. Let’s hope this comes into reality real soon.
02 May 2009
The dotMobi WordPress Mobile Pack
It looks like this new plugin is trying to be the most complete solution for a mobile WordPress experience:
…includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel…
I like how it provides both front-end and back-end mobile version of your WordPress. You can also check other plugins made for mobile purposes here.
27 April 2009
Hackers Highlight 26 April 2009
Welcome to the weekly Hackers Highlight, showcasing various interesting information that happened in the last week of WordPress hacker’s mailing list, wp-hackers. You can also follow the mailing list via the Google Group front-end here.
So there was a post on the WP dev blog asking folks for ideas and tweaks to the Dashboard design. Jane Wells linked to the related WordPress forum thread if you want to contribute or just follow the discussion. The 2.8 navigation design guidelines are available here.
Mike Walsh asked for plugins that can handle forms to be included with sign-up activity. TDO Mini Forms and MM Forms were recommended. A bunch of non-WordPress solutions were also suggested.
Here’s Ptah Dunbar with a code snippet on how to automatically activate certain widgets.
There’s also an on-going discussion started by Michael Toppa on how to make a plugin that loads certain CSS only on pages that use that plugin. No definitive solution so far. Any takers?
21 April 2009
40 Stylish and Minimal WordPress Themes
You don’t have to take a look around too long on this site to know that I heart minimalistic design. Here’s a bunch of WordPress themes designed that way, too.
How to Launch your WordPress Theme translated in Italian
Thanks to Danny, here’s the Italian version of my theme launching article. Enjoy, and thanks Danny!
20 April 2009
Hackers Highlight 19 April 2009
Welcome to the weekly Hackers Highlight, showcasing various interesting information that happened in the last week of WordPress hacker’s mailing list, wp-hackers. You can also follow the mailing list via the Google Group front-end here.
Did you know the WordPress 24-Hours Has-Patch Marathon a few days before? Here’s a little inside story of what happened in wp-hackers. Some wanted to help but couldn’t because there’s no news posted at the mailing list, and the two days prior announcement post at the WP development blog were simply too short.
Stephen Rider suggested that it is better to revert from using the word “Appearance” back to “Design” inside the Dashboard. The change to “Appearance” happened within the 2.7 redesign, which changed all the menus from verbs to nouns. “Design” is also a noun, he said, and it encompassed the content underneath that menu better: Widgets, for example, are not just appearances but also part of the design of the site. Demetris suggested using the word “Layout” instead. What do you think?
Here’s a discussion on using the WP_Query() to display posts with a certain search term.
On using WordPress Frameworks
If you’re interested to the whole WP frameworks and child themes development, definitely check the comment area of this article by Ptah Dunbar. Great discussion.
10 Exceptional WordPress Hacks
I would usually remove superfluous (things like “amazing”, “most-wanted”) adjectives from list post titles before writing them here, but this one is exceptional indeed. So go read it already.
Child Theme Basics
Ian Stewart explaining the basics of creating child themes:
…they don’t need theme files. None at all. Zero. You don’t need to understand PHP in the slightest to create a WordPress Child theme.
That’s my favorite part of creating child themes. You simply create a new styling (with CSS) for an already coded theme, saving you time and potential headaches. Think of it as a CSS Zen Garden experiment.
The Has-Patch Marathon Results
102 tickets are closed, and then some. Congratulations and thank you for all who participated.
14 April 2009
Hackers Highlight 12 April 2009
Wow, last weekend was quite a hectic one for me, and so this particular article goes out of schedule a bit. Anyways, as usually, this is the weekly Hackers Highlight, showcasing various interesting information that happened in the last week of WordPress hacker’s mailing list, wp-hackers.
First, I found out that the Google Groups frontend version of wp-hackers is a much pleasant version to read and link to, so I’m going to use that from now on.
Liraz Siri was working on including WordPress inside TurnKey Linux and then asked what plugins needs to be included with it. And so a bunch of WP hackers recommend their own list of good plugins to have when starting a new WP blog.
Shane A. Froebel released the wireframe document for the new Media Management System for WordPress 2.9.x. Sounds great. It’s on his blog, and also available as a PDF file (direct link, this one).
Here’s a nice and short discussion on best practices for using wp_enqueue_script and wp_enqueue_style, started by Michael Toppa.
Joost de Valk asked about some information on the syntax of WXR. Surprisingly, there is no such definitive resource anywhere!
13 April 2009
How to check whether you a child theme is active or not
Ptah Dunbar with a snippet of code that can be used either inside the parent or child theme. Clever.
WordPress Tutorials Round-up
A huge links list of more than 135 tutorials on various different aspect of WordPress.
Is WordPress controlling UI features too tightly?
David Peralty thinks so. It’s something to ponder about.
Videos: Interview with Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Hong Kong
Thomas Crampton listed a bunch of interesting interview videos, like Matt answering “how does your company communicate internally?” or “how do you drive traffic to a blog?“
Separating Trackbacks and Pingbacks in your Comments Area
This is quite a detailed coding tutorial on separating the two.