fidzu : WordPress

Release candidate 2 of WordPress 3.8 is now available for download. This is the last pre-release, and we expect it to be effectively identical to what's officially released to the public on Thursday.

This means if you are a plugin or theme developer, start your engines! (If they're not going already.) Lots of admin code has changed so it's especially important to see if your plugin works well within the new admin design and layout, and update the "Tested up to:" part of your plugin readme.txt.

If there is something in your plugin that you're unable to fix, or if you think you've found a bug, join us in #wordpress-dev in IRC, especially if you're able to join during the dev chat on Wednesday. The developers and designers who worked on this release are happy to help anyone update their code before the 3.8 release.

Happy hacking, everybody!

10 Dec 2013 1:08am GMT

One of the most popular modules used within Jetpack is Stats. This module replaces the stand-alone plugin formerly known as WordPress.com Stats. Unfortunately, the most recent update to Jetpack has temporarily broken the Stats dashboard widget. I've routinely seen the error message that is shown in the image above but I thought nothing of it. That is until I reviewed the support forum for Jetpack and noticed a thread dedicated to the Stats widget.

According to Jeremy Herve, a developer for team Jetpack, you can still access your stats by browsing to Jetpack > Site Stats. You just can't view them from the dashboard. There is a block of code that you can use to fix the problem if you're impatient. For most users however, I recommend waiting as Jeremy assures us that this will be fixed in the next version.

09 Dec 2013 10:08pm GMT

The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate is a popular tool for getting started with plugin development. Many top-notch WordPress developers have contributed to the boilerplate and the 2.6.0 release of the plugin provided a major update.

Using the plugin boilerplate as a starting place for plugin creation, a developer can quickly whip up a plugin in a matter of minutes. But what if you could do that even faster? Brad Vincent, author of the Themergency.com WordPress development blog, created a generator for the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate.

Using code from the grunt-wp-plugin by 10up, Vincent was able to set up a grunt-init template that generates a plugin from the boilerplate in about 30 seconds flat.

The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Generator github repo provides instructions for installing grunt-init and using the command line to create your new plugin.

The generator includes all the relevant plugin author information. It also automatically renames all the files correctly and replaces all the necessary variables within the files. The end result is your newly generated plugin, customized and ready for you to start building.

09 Dec 2013 8:08pm GMT

Have you ever logged into a WordPress site, charged with the task of fixing something, but totally in the dark about what changes had recently been made in the admin? It can sometimes be tough to track down who changed what and when they did it, especially on sites with multiple administrators.

Stream is a new tracking tool that provides a log of specific activities performed by logged-in users in the backend. It's a free plugin on WordPress.org that gives you information on recent logins, menu changes, plugin updates, content created/deleted, widgets activated/deactivated, theme changes, and much more.

The great thing about this plugin is that it doesn't display information in an ugly old error log style. It creates a beautiful table that fits nicely into the admin design with user avatars and sorting capabilities.

Records can also be searched and the plugin allows you to filter by date, users, context and actions. It even shows which IP address the event originated from. Sorting by actions allows you to find items such as the following: activated, assigned, attached, edited, uploaded, password reset and more.

Using Stream to Unravel Support Knots

This plugin might be an excellent solution for those who perform maintenance and troubleshooting for clients. Sometimes clients cannot remember what action they took in the admin to cause changes to the site. The Stream plugin goes a long way to help with troubleshooting. In the very least it can help you eliminate things like changes to plugins or themes while tracking down the source of a problem.

The Stream settings page gives you an option to determine how long records should be saved before being purged. You can set this depending on the amount of user activity you usually have on the site in question. It also includes an option to reset your stream by deleting all of the activity records in the database.

Please note that Stream requires PHP 5.3 or higher. Download the plugin for free from the WordPress plugin repository or via the plugins panel in the WordPress admin. The sooner you have it activated on a site, the sooner you'll be tracking valuable information.

09 Dec 2013 6:44pm GMT

09 Dec 2013 6:11pm GMT

Developed by Earth People, a web development agency based out of Gamla Stan in Stockholm, the WordPress Plugin checker can find which plugins are installed on almost any WordPress site. Unfortunately, this tool doesn't list all of the plugins it detects. Instead, it looks to see if any of the plugins developed by Earth People are installed along with the 50 most popular plugins. Despite having a blank index.php file in place to prevent visitors from seeing a directory listing of the plugins folder, the plugin checker was able to determine that the site was using five of the most popular plugins.

Cool Tool But Not Useful To Me

While the plugin checker is a neat tool, I'd find it more useful if it listed all of the plugins in use on a website. It wouldn't need to link to them on the WordPress.org plugin repository since I'd be able to locate them myself. However, I can see how this could raise privacy issues even though there wouldn't be a way to download any code from the plugins listed.

09 Dec 2013 5:07pm GMT

Scott Basgaard will be our live guest on Friday, December 13th at 3PM Eastern time. Scott is currently employed by WooThemes and is one of the pioneers behind WordSesh. We'll be talking to Scott about WordSesh 2 which recently took place this past weekend. We'll also find out what he's up to these days as well as what he does for WooThemes. If you have any questions you'd like us to ask Scott about WordSesh or WooThemes, submit them in the comments.

09 Dec 2013 3:40pm GMT

WordSesh was like crack for WordPress enthusiasts who joined together on Twitter and eagerly counted down the minutes until sessions began. The event took place over the weekend, kicked off by the DradCast podcast which introduced a catchy new WordSesh rap. In case you missed it, WordSesh presenters cranked out an impressive 24 hours of free WordPress knowledge and each session is now available on YouTube.

The first WordSesh was a grand experiment that proved to be so successful, the organizers decided to schedule another one before the year's end. With no travel requirements or location constraints, the event was able to pull in some of the brightest minds in the WordPress community. Speakers presented on a wide range of topics, including design, product pricing, building themes, debugging, Javascript, podcasting and more.

Attendance for the event far exceeded that of most WordCamps. WordSesh organizers shared some of their viewership stats on Twitter and the results demonstrate that the event was a hit all over the world:

• The city of Sofia, Bulgaria, had the most viewers of any city in the world, followed by London and New york.
• 36 unique viewers from Africa
• 98 unique viewers from Oceania
• 120 unique viewers from Asia
• 843 unique viewers from Europe
• 1,404 unique viewers from North / South America
• 3,000 unique viewers over 85 countries

Despite the overall success of the event, participants noticed a few issues that might be improved for next year. Server performance was a little spotty at first, perhaps due to the number of people trying to live stream simultaneously. They were able to work it out fairly quickly without significant delays. Hopefully, the organizers will be able to find a better-performing hosting solution next time, given how quickly the popularity of this event is skyrocketing after just one year.

Others also commented that the event was slanted towards developers and those heavily involved in operating WordPress product and service businesses. WordSesh viewer David Bisset said, "I would like to see more beginner WordSesh stuff. I spoke to 30-40 people at the last WP meetup and they would have loved to experience that." He makes an excellent point. WordPress meetups and WordCamps that have a beginner track often get beginners fired up about the software and eager to explore more advanced topics. Adding WordPress beginner sessions might help to expand the audience for the event and bring together users of all levels.

For those who were in attendance, the excitement was palpable. A WordSesh after party carried on in the chatroom after the event concluded, mirroring what often happens at the live WordCamps. Nobody wanted to "go home". The success of Wordsesh 2 shows once again that the WordPress community loves to share knowledge, collaborate and gather around a good cause. Here's hoping we can all jump in on another one in six months and smash all the viewership records.

09 Dec 2013 1:39pm GMT

09 Dec 2013 8:14am GMT

09 Dec 2013 2:08am GMT

08 Dec 2013 9:57pm GMT

08 Dec 2013 9:51am GMT

08 Dec 2013 9:42am GMT

In this edition of WordPress Weekly, our special guest was Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress. After catching up with the headlines, we covered a wide range of topics with Matt such as:

• Automattic Fighting Back Against DMCA Takedown Abuse
• Giving The Keynote Speech At The Joomla World Conference Day
• Matt's Thoughts On The WordPress Backend Concept By George Kordas
• Features As Plugins First Development Strategy
• WordPress 3.8

There are a number of things in this interview that provide food for thought. One of them is thinking about all of the changes that WordPress will undergo over the next 5-10 years. Is it possible that at some point WordPress becomes something other than WordPress? Matt referred to this as the Ship Of Theseus or Theseus's paradox. The paradox raises the question of whether an object which has had all its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object.

Stories Discussed:

bbPress 2.5.1 Released
WordCamp Dayton, Ohio 2014 Looking For Speakers
WordSesh 2

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Friday, December 13th 3 P.M. Eastern - Scott Basgaard

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Listen To Episode #130:

08 Dec 2013 8:22am GMT

Very honored to be on Time's 30 under 30 list alongside some amazing folks across a number of fields. I only have about another month of being under 30, so good to be on these lists while I still can.

08 Dec 2013 3:25am GMT

08 Dec 2013 1:50am GMT