WordPress 2.8 feature ranking survey
With over 600,000 thousands in just a few weeks, WordPress 2.7 is a sure hit. And that success has a lot to do with the active participation of its community.
Automattic continues to acknowledge this, and they are moving on to develop for the next version of WP, they’re enlisting our help once more in deciding the key features to include in its release.
Right now, the lead developers are thinking the top priorities for 2.8 will be widget management, theme browser/installer and performance upgrades. The rest of the development time will be taken up with bug tickets and additional features/enhancements from a prioritized list. To that end, we’ve posted a new survey for you to help us prioritize features for 2.8. The list pulls from the developers’ “2.7 leftovers” list as well as the most popular features from the Ideas forum. Just rank each feature and tell us your top pick (up to three). You also have the option of adding comments or additional suggestions, but this is not mandatory. For your response to count, you must rank all of the features in the list. The survey has only one page.
Take the survey here. Deadline is on December 31.
Other miscellaneous announcements from the above post:
- Lead developers will resume IRC chats and discuss weekly progress on feature development. Everybody is invited to participate in these chats.
- You should submit your ideas for new WordPress features to the Ideas section, not the Trac.
Transcript from Matt Mullenweg interview on GPL WordPress themes
Update (12/27/08): Part 3 is up.
Update (12/23/08): Part 2 is up.
The other week I wrote about Automattic pulling 200 themes from the WordPress theme directory. Since then we’ve been waiting for an official word from Matt Mullenweg and it couldn’t have come in a better form: a live interview on the WordPress Weekly Podcast, hosted by Jeff Chandler. For those who weren’t able to listen to it, here’s part 1 of the transcript courtesy of WP Snippets.
One of the big questions regarding the team’s decision is: “why do they have to approve themes based on the content and links on MY site?” It’s a pretty sound question because a website is a pretty big leap from a theme. Well Matt likens it to WordPress endorsing Expression Engine, a paid CMS solution, on their website:
First of all, you can do whatever you like on any website. There’s nothing built in WordPress that’s going to you. I am not even going to tell anyone or tell you that you should change things. But WordPress.org is sort of a community hub where we’ve tried to promote the open source stuff.
So, just like I wouldn’t want to, I don’t know, umm… let’s say a commercial CMS, Expression Engine. Ok… I wouldn’t have links advertising Expression Engine on WordPress.org. I wouldn’t have links advertising other things that are not on open source, even ones that actively violate our license.
Here’s another burning controversy: is Automattic doing this to keep the profitability of WordPress to itself?
JC: Ok, so here’s the next question: Why is it that so many people within the inner circle of the WordPress community believe you and Automattic don’t want anyone else profiting through or around WordPress? It seems to be this notion, primarily from those who make a living selling premium themes.
Matt: *laughs* Well, I have said it before that it’s hard to convince anyone that the way that they currently making money is wrong, *laughs* you know, if you are paying your bills with the way you’re making money, you’re going to find ways to rationalise and… sort of believe in that. There are, at every WordCamp, there will be 100 people there, and there may be 20-30 there making their living from WordPress right then.
And it’s all sorts of different things: sometimes it’s developing sites, like their agency is a site developer or designers; sometimes they’re provide training services - education; sometimes they’re just working for a company and being like the sort of full time WordPress guy.
But if I had to estimate, there are probably tens of thousands of people out there that make their living either with or on top of WordPress, and that’s not even counting bloggers. If you talk about a network like Digg or ??? or TechCrunch or something, also built entirely on top of WordPress.
So I’m totally for that. And you know what, honestly, the GPL is very commercially friendly. It was designed to allow commercial enterprises to thrive. You know some people say it doesn’t work, but you only have to look at one, the growth of WordPress, and two, the grown of the open source world in general for the past thirty years to say ‘Wow, this is actually a very, very powerful force.’
Bottom line here is, don’t make free, GPL-compliant WordPress themes and submit them to the directory if your only motive is to get people to buy proprietary WordPress themes. (Helpful hint: you can make money from WordPress in many other ways. If it’s specifically themes, take a look at Brian Gardner’s Revolution Two. He gives away high-quality themes for free but charges for support.)
Matt and the gang are just trying to keep the WP community a good one.
WordPress theme directory updates policy, removes 200 themes
Spectacu.la reports that over 200 themes have been removed from the official WordPress theme repository a couple of days ago, and this is the notification they got:
Links to spectacu.la will no longer be approved, as a result this theme has been suspended.
Looks like Automattic has updated its policy for theme approvals:
Themes for sites that support “premium” (non-GPL or compatible) themes will not be approved.
That means it’s not enough for your theme to be GPL compatible. If you’re simply associated with premium WordPress themes, your free and open source WordPress themes could suffer as well.
More discussion at Justin Tadlock’s site. Is this fair or is this getting to be too harsh?
IntenseDebate reopens after Automattic acquisition, new WordPress plugin available
IntenseDebate reopens after going invite-only since its acquisition by Automattic. So for those who haven’t signed up for an account, now you can.
And of course, they’ve made it especially easy to use for WordPress users with a new beta plugin, with the following features:
- Two-Way Comment Sync (comments are saved both in your WordPress database and the IntenseDebate server)
- Admin Panel Integration
- Search Engine Optimization
- Trackbacks
- Profile Sync
- Post Settings
And more:
Can’t wait to get hold of all the great commenting features included in WordPress 2.7? Get IntenseDebate now!
WordPress Admin Dashboard to be updated in 2.7
The admin dashboard is an essential part of what makes WordPress really work, which is why the Automattic team continues to tweak it to ultimate user interface perfection. In the upcoming version 2.7 (nicknamed “Crazyhorse”), WP FUN shares a glimpse of what the new dashboard will look like:
Each of the menu items on the left open and close as needed. Templates contains everything that is in the design tab now. Utilities features the new inbox (which seems to include notifications about WordPress and maybe new comments, but it doesn’t do anything yet) and some of the contents of the manage menu.
The recently-concluded WordCamp also demo-ed Crazyhorse. You can find more pictures here. See the “Riding the Crazyhorse” talk by Liz Danzico of Happy Cog, the company who redesigned the admin interface in WordPress 2.5.
A video courtesy of socialTNT is also embedded below:
Finally, CalinSoft has also posted an in-depth walkthrough of Crazyhorse, though unfortunately it’s in Spanish. (Try Google’s translation here.)
The dashboard is just a critical part of a blogger’s workflow, so it’s a good thing that WordPress is really working hard to continuously improve it.
WordPress 2.6 Beta 3, WordPress MU 2.6 beta 1 (2.6 final is 1 week away!)
The Automattic team continues to push out new updates for the WordPress 2.6 branch, WordPress MU included. Once more Ryan Boren is the bearer of the new beta release, download the zip file here.
He also writes that the final release of WordPress 2.6 is just 1 week away, contrary to the belief that it would come out last July 7. That’s still a reasonable delay, considering everybody’s still getting used to 2.5!
TypePad AntiSpam for WordPress and WordPress.com Stats for Movable Type
WordPress and WordPress.com are Automattic products, while Movable Type and TypePad are SixApart products. These two companies are fierce competitors for the blogging platform crown, but here’s a surprise: you can actually use two of their plugins for the “opposing camp”.
TypePad AntiSpam
TypePad AntiSpam is SixApart’s answer to Automattic’s Akismet. It’s completely compatible with the latter, and like it you’ll need to register for an API key, also for free. Get started here.
WordPress.com Stats
WordPress.com Stats is an analytics program for self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com users alike. Movable Type users can run this plugin as well, but they’ll also need a corresponding API key. Complete details found here.
It’s clear that these two companies are looking to expand their userbase not just with their blog software but with other projects in tow.
More Frequent WordPress Development Updates
The official WordPress Development blog is not updated as often as WordPress fans would like it to be, but thankfully the Automattic gang launched an up-to-the-second blog with the help of a unique little theme.
Visit the WordPress Development Updates blog.
