July 2013 • Post Status

I am Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress (18% of web!) and Automattic, ask me anything!

Matt Mullenweg fields questions in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” thread after WordCamp San … Read more

WordPress Infographic 2013

Elegant Themes team went to WordCamp San Francisco and designed a nice WordPress Infographic … Read more

All plugins are (not) created equal

Plugins are the new black in WordPress site development, and picking out the perfect plugins for your site can quickly become overwhelming. The WordPress.org plugin repository hosts over 26,000 plugins and the plugin forum contains over 1.3 million posts. Check out this plugin wordcloud – what stands out amongst the rest?

With so many plugins to pick from, how do you know what you’re about to install on your site?

The quick And dirty

Plugins are here to stay, folks, and while there is a lot to learn, many of us just need a quick way to say yes or no to a plugin option. Personally, I like to evaluate using the following key points:

All plugins are not created equal.
Plugins can make or break your site: literally.
Stranger danger!
You get what you pay for.
Quantity v. quality does not apply – good coding does.

Before we get down into the nitty gritty of each component, I’m going to offer a little fashionable advice about plugins. I bet you didn’t know that picking the perfect plugin was like picking out your next perfect little black dress!

legacy-wp Greenfield projects are the dream of most of developers. We have no legacy code to deal with. Just a clean WordPress install and whatever tools we decide best accomplish the goals of the client.

Unfortunately you’re not always going to get greenfield projects. Some will have legacy code that you have to accommodate and you may even be getting a repair job where the legacy code is just busted.

Here’s how I approach a client project that has legacy issues.

Review Review Review

It’s pretty typical for a client to know what the issues are with their site. You’ll get a list like:

infinite redirect loop on category pages
super slow when I view the homepage
I have no idea why we are getting post content on my sidebar on X page.

I’ve got a starting point sure, but I don’t have any idea why those things are happening either. I haven’t seen the code and I probably don’t know who built the site and the type of code they write (it’s all bad if you didn’t write it right!). The best I’ve got is a guess about why it might be happening and you can’t quote fixes on a guess.

That means the starting point is a site/code review. For my clients I book in a 5 – 10 hour review with the goal of determining why the issues they’ve highlighted are happening and what it’s going to take to fix it.

My reviews have 3 main categories that roughly follow below (but with more client friendly names).

Urgent as in the internet will blow up and you will be hacked
Important but not any impending issues that I see
I dislike it, but there is nothing wrong with this approach I guess

Items like not equeueing javascript properly or using query_posts I put in “Urgent”, and things like using deprecated functions in “Important”. Relying on a plugin that’s not as solid as other offerings (like not using Gravity Forms) is my third priority item.

How I review

Six WordPress and web design eBooks you may enjoy

Here’s a roundup of some of the best WordPress and web design eBooks that … Read more

Potential roadmap for taxonomy meta and post relationships

Andrew Nacin has written a thorough post discussing many of the challenges for implementing … Read more

WordPress, forking, and the road to 4.0

At WordCamp San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg presented the future of WordPress versions 3.7 and … Read more

2013 State of the Word from Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg just delivered the 2013 State of the Word, his annual update about WordPress.

He started off discussing the history of WCSF, and the first WordCamp San Francisco 8 years ago. It was pretty low tech at first, and organizers have learned a great deal since then. There have in fact been 314 WordCamp’s to date and 72 already this year. At the WordCamps this year, there have been 1,026 speakers. And there have been 1.4 million views of WordPress.tv this year, where most presentation recordings are hosted.

Significant events

December 2012 marked the release of WordPress 3.5, or Elvin. The release included a completely new media interface, the release of the twenty twelve theme, and making the admin “crisp” on retina devices.

Matt highlights lots of questions and rumors about 3.6’s release, but notes that it will be released “soon”. However, for the first time, Matt has highlighted WordPress 3.6 with a world premier. My in-audience recording of the 3.6 “Oscar” video is here:

http://youtu.be/KQGRW8dBghQ

WordPress 3.6 looks amazing.

Update: the entire State of the Word and Q & A with Matt that followed is now available on WordPress TV. Also, Japh Thomson has done a Storify with some extra information and pictures you will enjoy.

The last year in review

WP Engine has been working on Torque for a number of months. Their tagline for it, as it turns out, is “The WordPress News Core.” Beyond that, they don’t particularly say on the site how they plan to frame the content, but they’ve kicked things off with a number of posts from prominent community members, and they’ve also arranged a deal to acquire the WP Daily archives.

WP Daily now completely redirects to torquemag.io, the domain for the new site. Also, WP Engine has acquired the WP Daily twitter handle (and inherently its followers too).

I knew WP Engine was working on a new form of WordPress content website, but I didn’t know anything about their deal with WP Daily. They asked me to write an article for a new “magazine”, so I did and you can see it on Torque now.

The history of WordPress book is on Github

The history of WordPres book that Siobhan McKeown is leading is now on Github … Read more

Thoughts on WordPress affiliate programs

Tom McFarlin gives some great thoughts (that I happen to agree with fully) about … Read more

Pagelines DMS reviews

Pagelines just released their “DMS” (Design Management System). A couple of reviews have already … Read more

WP Weekend Phoenix details emerge

I guess we can call it a trend now. For the second time in as many weeks, a WordCamp has been “forked”. WordCamp Phoenix has been a tremendously popular event in past years. I know at least one year they had over 600 attendees.

Today, WP Weekend Phoenix launched as a new conference for WordPress, unaffiliated with WordCamps. The organizers cite why they decided to do WP Weekend Phoenix versus a traditional WordCamp:

Sponsor Partners – WP Weekend Phoenix will have new opportunities to form sponsors and partnerships with companies and organizations that are a part of the WordPress ecosystem, but have not been involved in WordCamps in the past.

Speakers – WP Weekend Phoenix will be able to select from a range of local and national speakers to deliver the quality content that our community craves.

Scope – As an independent event, the amount of growth and possibilities is limited only by the hard work and ideas of the community. We can offer an event that will be even bigger and better than in year’s past.

According to the website, 3 of 4 previous organizers are on board with WP Weekend Phoenix in “advisory” roles.

David Bisset is an epic WordCamp follower. He should have a badge. He’ll be … Read more

Interview with wpMail.me and Cozmos Labs founder Cristian Antohe

Troy Dean, of Video User Manuals, has a new interview up on his CommPress … Read more

Filter existing shortcodes in WordPress 3.6

Here’s a great post with a working example of the new shortcode_atts{$shortcode} filter available in WordPress … Read more

I am Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress (18% of web!) and Automattic, ask me anything!

WordPress Infographic 2013