Posts Tagged ‘themes’
October 27th, 2009
Whether you’re a WordPress expert, beginner or simply a blogger running WordPress, WordPress MU, BuddyPress or any others, here’s a little list of WordPress blogs that you should definitely follow (not mentioning the WordPress Development Blog and Matt Mullenweg’s Blog, and maybe #wordpress on Twitter, I assume you’re following them since your first ever WordPress installation ;). These include themes, development tutorials, plugins, SEO and publishing tips, customization techniques and much more. Ordered by my preference.
The Best Resources for WordPress Stuff
Over 15,000 subscribers, plugin and theme releases lists and news, WordPress video tutorials, code snippets and much more. Running around by the name of @weblogtooltips on Twitter. Here’s a quick list of some of their posts:
With over 6,000 readers WpRecipes.com is one of my favourite blogs for “Daily recipes to cook with WordPress”, known as @catswhocode on Twitter. Here are some posts from WP Recipes:
Sweet blog with tonnes of tips and tricks, WordPress events, also covering WordPress MU, BuddyPress and bbPress. @wptavern on Twitter.
If you’re a beginner in WordPress then you should definitely follow this blog. Very nice tutorials about customizing WordPress.
For WordPress news, events. Not much tutorials here, but being up to date with what’s happening around WordPress is always a great idea. On Twitter: @lorelleonwp.
Hosted by Ryan Imel Theme Playground is definitely a must-follow blog for WordPress themes & plugins, reviews, code snippets and giveaways.
5000 readers of WordPress hacks enjoy blogging tips and tricks, wordpress guides, themes, plugins, frameworks and more! Known as @hackwordpress on Twitter.
These guys haven’t got much readers – a few over a thousand, but the theme reviews they publish are so cool! Their latest “Theme Battle” series is awsome, plus they’ve got a list of nice WordPress resources every week. This is a must-subscribe, @themelab on Twitter.
Everything you need to know about WordPress MU and BuddyPress. Installation tips, modifications, hacks, tricks and explenations. Here’s the latest:
That’s about it, some other less popular (or less fortunate ;) blogs you may find interesting are:
And of course if you’ve anything to add to this list, please share via comments.
October 19th, 2009
I’ve been using it! Okay, so I’m not going to talk about all the great stuff coming up in 2.9, all the bugs they’ve fixed, all the features they’ve added, no. I’d just like to tell you about my experience running a step ahead of everybody else. When WordPress has made the switch from 2.7 to 2.8 I’ve decided to risk it and take the 2.9 path. I’m not sure why everybody’s talking about that new beta testers plugin being released, but I bet that a “beta tester” or at least somebody who wants a ride at the 2.9 branch do know how to use their FTP client. More advanced “testers” do this via shell. Oh come on, I mean how difficult could it be to locate one single file, download it, edit and upload back to your server? I could bet $20 that it’s way faster than installing that plugin.
WordPress Developers: Running a Step Ahead
Anyways, back to my WordPress 2.9. Nightly updates are being released every day, I make sure to update at least once every two weeks. And everytime I felt the blog apocalypse coming, although I do have daily server backups, but downtime to me is so crucial. The best part of it is that I’ve never seen anything crash, really, all the plugins are working like a charm, my theme has (almost) never been broken, so I hope it stays that way. In case you’re experiencing any problems, make sure you report to the plugins and themes authors, and do state you’re running a development version, I’m sure they’ll note it down and get back at you a few weeks before the release ;)
So what’s the big deal about running ahead? Well, if you’re a WordPress plugin developer then you know what the big deal is. Whenever an update comes out you see your plugins crashing and malfunctioning and “a few weeks” may not be enough sometimes, though WordPress warns about checking all the plugins compatibility before upgrading, theme compatibility, blah blah blah. Users don’t do that. They upgrade and that’s it. If your plugin stopped working, they go find themselves one that’s okay. There, you’ve just lost a client.
When running a step ahead you’ve got all the time to test and debug your work and get it ready for the upgrade. But why not locally? Motivation, motivation, motivation. Whenever something doesn’t work locally, you go have a snack, lie on the couch, watch some tv, play some video games.. I could go on. When your online blog stops working, you sit all night and fix it. Well at least that’s what I do ;) but be careful not to forget about back compatibility, as you don’t want to be stuck at 2.9 while it hasn’t yet been released, and everybody running 2.8 get those nasty error messages! Also be careful playing with the new features and try to stick to the current stable release as much as possible.
One more interesting thing about using a higher branch than the stable, is that when the WordPress guys find out a critical bug in the current stable (just like in 2.8.3 for instance) there’ll be loads of people searching for 2.8.3 blogs and trying to hack them of whatever, but yours wouldn’t count ;) perhaps breaking a development version would be too easy for them “hackers” ;)
Anyways, I hope the testing goes well, 2.9 is released and I’ll finally be able to make my switch to 3.0, which is already marked in the WordPress Core Trac Roadmap. I’ve tried switching the branch to 3.0 today but with no luck, back to 2.9-rare after the nightly upgrade.
So, good luck may the power of WordPress be with you! ;)
August 7th, 2009
My brand new creation: The Foller.me Theme for WordPress and I ain’t releasing it public ;)
July 31st, 2009
This is early experimental. And, I’ve also marked this post into the “personal” category, because you wouldn’t want your clients to have too much access, especially if they share a single WordPress installation. Now I know there’s the WordPress MU project, but I guess I can’t use it in this case, because WordPress MU assumes your URLs will be within the same domain (either subdomains or directories).
Creating A Multiblog WordPress
The reason I want multiple sites to be driven by one single WordPress installation is because I’m really tired of upgrading everytime. Upgrading the WordPress Core once in a while is okay, but when you’ve got a list of 30 plugins, it’s a pain in the neck upgrading two or three every day on every single blog and website you run. Automatic updates is not a choice, as I want to take a look at what I’m updating to before actually doing it, at least once.
I won’t be doing this from scratch. I’ll start by merging this blog and the Foller.me blog into a single installation. Single doesn’t mean they share the same database, all they share is the WordPress core files, plugins and themes. Yes, this may be dangerous, because not all the plugins store the data in the database (though I believe they should, at least when they’re capable of doing that). Now imagine the Next Gen Gallery (or perhaps any other gallery plugin) being shared over two websites within one WordPress installation. The albums are stored in one folder called gallery. So there might be a conflict if two albums have the same name. There might be an option to store the files in a different directory, and hope that option is stored in the database, will check on that later.
One more issue.. Remember I said personal projects? And assigned the post to the personal category? If you’ve got some clients who are hosted on WordPress, and you’re doing some admin things for them but they DO have admin rights in their admin panels, then I wouldn’t go with this stuff, as it’ll be quite difficult to restrict them from changing eachothers themes and plugins that they share. Get my point?
kay, now the trick will be in the wp-config.php file. We’ll basically look at the incoming address using some regular expression or whatever. If it’s based on kovshenin.com, then we connect to database 1, otherwise, if it’s based on blog.foller.me we connect to the 2nd database, and so on. Pretty simple, huh? If you’re a total freak you might wanna try changing just the prefix, thus having multiple websites, one WordPress installation, one database and a bunchload of tables ;)
I’ve no idea if this will alter the overall performance, but keeping total visitors under ~ 20,000 per day should be just fine ;) I’ll get back at you with another post next week, hopefully with some tests and some results. Cheers!
June 23rd, 2009
I’ve managed to chat with one of the three founders of WooThemes lately – Adii Pienaar. Adii was very busy during the last couple of weeks with the Woo2 Release, but he was still so kind to answer some questions I had, so here we go:
Interview with Adii Pienaar from WooThemes
@kovshenin Okay Adii, how are things going at WooThemes right now? I mean after WordPress has released 2.8 and most of your clients have upgraded (I guess). Everything okay?
@adii Yep. Everything is fine again now. We only had some minor bugs to fix in some of our older themes, when WP 2.8 was released, but it seems that those are all squashed now and the ship is sailing once again.
@kovshenin I believe the toughest times were between the Release Candidate and the actual 2.8 Release, right? Did you manage to do everything in time?
@adii Well, we generally only fix bugs once an official version is released. So whilst we did some prelimanery testing on 2.8 beta’s, we only started fixing bugs when 2.8 was released. Obviously this is a bit difficult, since some of our users upgraded immediately, but we managed to do all the testing & fixing within about 2 days after 2.8 was released.
@kovshenin Wow, guess those were 24 hr workdays? ;)
@adii Hehe nah. We have a pretty dynamic team, so it was “all in a day’s work”. Plus we do bug fixing & improvements to our themes on a daily basis anyway.
@kovshenin Most WordPress plugin & theme developers were not pleased that 2.8 was released after only four days after the release candidate was. What do you think about it? Should the WordPress developers slow it down next time?
@adii I didn’t really perceive it that way and don’t really mind it to be honest. The beta was out for quite some time and I don’t think there were too many groundbreaking differences from the beta version to the RC and the RC to the actual release.
@kovshenin What about the 2.6 to 2.7 switch? That had some core changes, didn’t it?
@adii Oh yes definitely. There’s been quite a few changes from 2.6 to 2.7, which required a lot more changes within our older themes. 2.8 was minor compared to those.
Strange, but fair enough. Why bother working with the release candidate when you could just ask your clients to not rush with the update and work with the actual release, which may also be slightly different from the RC.
@kovshenin Which of the new 2.8 features did you like best?
@adii Most definitely the improved widget interface, which is absolutely amazing. And a MASSIVE improvement on previous versions.
@kovshenin I was sure you liked the syntax highlighter :D
@adii Well, I never use the theme editor in the admin panel (as I’m sure other serious WP developers do), so whilst it’s a great feature I’m honestly not that excited by it.
When I first saw the code editor built in WordPress I thought it’s no use at all. Why would I use a simple code editor that has no lines numbered, no syntax highlighting to edit php files that I could easily edit via FTP? Well if you need to edit a few lines in your header.php (like add a favico or whatever) it’s much easier to add that using the built in code editor than to search for the FTP account details, download the file, change it, upload back to server. What if you’re not at your usual workplace?
With the built in code editor you can even make those changes using your iPhone ;) And now that it’s got the syntax highlighter and the function browser, wow, that makes it even cooler!
@kovshenin Did you know about Chet Baker BEFORE the 2.8 announcement?
@adii Hell no.
Oh well, neither did I. Did you? Vote vote here ;)
@kovshenin I heard you run a little design agency called Radiiate. Are your clients okay with WordPress? I mean lots of people think that WordPress is for blogs, right? How do you convince your clients that WordPress can drive a corporate website, e-store and a social network? What example websites/products do you like to show?
@adii Mmm, well firstly Radiiate hasn’t been actively doing client work for a few months now, because we’re focussing on WooThemes. But… I think most of Radiiate’s client came to us looking for a WordPress solution, so we didn’t need to convince them about using WP in favour of other alternatives.
@kovshenin But you are gonna keep up the work at Radiiate aren’t you? whenever things settle down with Woo..
@adii Yes and no. Radiiate is on the backburner, so whilst there’s no immediate or set plan to revive it, I’m sure it’ll be something that I spend time on again in future. And to continue fueling WooThemes’ growth, we need to focus all our energy on it! :)
Well, too bad.. *sigh*
@kovshenin What do you think about WordPress “Theme Frameworks” such as Thesis, Thematic, etc. Do they have a future?
@adii Definitely. I think both Thesis and Thematic are great themes and many more developers are going to adopt them (or other similar frameworks). Theme Frameworks are however more developer tools (imo), so more out-of-box themes will still have a role to play within the theming community.
I totally disagree here. I think developers will be looking forward to create their own tools. Look at Ryan’s post about Creating Your Own WordPress Theme Framework.
@kovshenin Your thoughts on SquareSpace. If you were a WordPress.com blogger, would you switch to SquareSpace?
@adii I haven’t actually tried SquareSpace, but I’m hearing good things about it. So I can’t really give an opinion…
@kovshenin Where did the “Woo” come from? Is it from like “Woohoo! I got a brand new Theme!” ? :D
@adii Hehe no. Magnus actually came up with it and it’s a mix of w00t & WordPress.
I guess that’s it. Thank you Adii and thank you WooThemes!
