Week in review: Sass in _s, CPT standards, MailPoet vs Sucuri, and meet me in New York

Welcome to the fifth “Week in Review” on Post Status, where I hope to offer up some of the things you may have missed in the last week or so.

Sass is coming to Underscores

A long-awaited feature, the first pass at introducing Sass to the Underscores (_s) theme has been committed. This morning’s commit by Tammie Lister follows a number of much-discussed Github threads, and it looks promising. The Sassy version of Underscores is in its own branch, if you want to explore it further and get started with that version right away.

I’ve been using my own forked version of Underscores for some time now, that includes Sass, and I’m happy to see this change. I look forward to comparing their version with my own and learning from it. Underscores has become one of the most popular WordPress themes to build custom websites from, and this is a great change.

If you don’t think you’re ready for Sass, Josh Pollock has a nice post on Torque to help you out.

Custom post type standards are underway

After my post recommending that Jetpack lead the way for standardizing custom post types, Justin Tadlock wrote an excellent follow-up piece.

Furthermore, he started a Github repo for a community-based, unofficial standards document. This is exactly the type of discussion that I hoped would occur, and I encourage you all to get involved. If enough of us encourage standards for some common custom content types, we can make portability between WordPress themes even better, and that would be great.

The first issue is to decide what post types to standardize, so go get involved.

Standard site logo support for the customizer

Also along the standardization theme, WordPress.com has introduced a feature for theme developers to create standard support for site logos, a feature that’s in almost any WordPress theme.

The feature is live on WordPress.com, and coming to a Jetpack near you. WordPress.com added support for about a dozen themes for the launch of the feature.

MailPoet and Sucuri spar over the handling of security disclosures

On July 1st, Sucuri disclosed a vulnerability in MailPoet, a very popular WordPress-centric newsletter plugin. Over the next few days, MailPoet released a variety of updates. A bunch of WordPress websites were estimated to be hacked. Updates were available, and many hosts made server level changes, but it affected every version and was a serious issue.

However, MailPoet was unsatisfied with how Sucuri handled the disclosure, and posted some lessons learned on their blog a couple of days ago. That post is worth reading on its own, but essentially they’re displeased at the rapidity of Sucuri’s actions from notification of the vulnerability to publishing the news on their blog. Sucuri says it was standard practice, and give a rundown in an open letter to MailPoet on their own blog.

When your primary software product has something like this happen, your emotions definitely tick up a notch or three. I can see both sides of this story. In the end, it’s important that the fix gets in and site owners and hosts get notified so they can get their sites fixed. I don’t know who is more correct in this story (I haven’t given it enough thought, honestly), but I think most things are better settled in a different venue than trading accusatory and pointed open letters — something both parties are guilty of here.

Starting a WordPress blog?

Oli Dale has some really interesting insight where he raises the hypothetical, “If I were to start a blog about WordPress today.” He highlights how he thinks some genres (like WordPress news) are well covered, but that he sees a great deal of potential in more niche markets.

Definitely read Oli’s advice if you’re looking to start a blog. Also keep in mind, really there is so much opportunity, no matter what you see out there today; just do it better than anyone else and you can succeed. (Notable on this topic, WP Scoop just rebranded itself)

Related, but more general: You are not late.

GravityView: display entries of Gravity Forms anywhere on your site

Zack Katz has released GravityView, a plugin that takes Gravity Forms submissions and lets you put them anywhere on your site. This plugin look really slick, and I see a lot of potential uses for it.

Zack is the developer of the free Gravity Forms Directory plugin, and GravityView is a different plugin, but expanded version of that. Zack talks about GravityView and his thinking behind it on the latest Apply Filters podcast, which he recorded right before he released the plugin.

Automating WP App Store

Iain Poulson wrote a fun little post about how he’s automated most of the work that goes into WP App Store, a former marketplace product turned email deals product.

Brian Richards goes full-time on WP Sessions, introduces first course

Brian Richards has left his position at WebDevStudios to attempt a full-time career building WP Sessions, his WordPress learning website.

As I noted last week, he’s giving away a $2,000 value trip to WCSF to those that sign up for his VIP program, and there are still a couple of days to enter.

He also just released a course on building WordPress plugins, which Pippin Williamson is teaching; it doesn’t get much better than that. I wish Brian the best of luck, and hope WP Sessions sustains him.

My first WordCamp San Francisco

I guest posted on the WordCamp San Francisco blog, where I talked about my first experience at WCSF. Incredible relationships and experiences are made at WordCamps; this is my story.

Along a similar vein, Christine Rondeau answers, “Why bother with WordCamps?”

Meet me in New York

I’m really excited to attend WordCamp New York City Friday through Sunday. If you’re there, I’d love to meet. The lineup of attendees and speakers is insane. I’ll also be doing some hallway interviews, so Post Status readers will hopefully enjoy the results of those. I’ll probably be singing Alicia Keys to myself for the next few days, so you can have that mental image for free.

It’s not quite midnight on Monday in Alabama, as I wrap this up. So while the week in review is a bit late this week, I hope you still enjoyed it and learned something new. If you did, I of course appreciate if you’ll share it with your social network of choice.

Have a great week everyone.