Bug Chasing

By Dougal | Published: March 7, 2010

Okay, so in my post about Code Spelunking I mentioned about how working on a project can lead you to explore the code because you need to become more familiar with how the code works. But it can also lead you to explore the code to figure out why code doesn’t work. In this particular case, I spent many hours puzzling over why something didn’t work correctly, chasing down the root cause, and eventually finding a bug in the WordPress core. I documented the bug in Ticket #12394, provided a patch, and it was committed to core in Changeset [13561], which will be part of WordPress 3.0.

Read the rest of this article…

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Dougal on WordPress Community Podcast

By Dougal | Published: February 23, 2010

I was the guest tonight on the WordPress Community Podcast, hosted by Joost de Valk and Frederick Townes. We talked about upcoming features in WordPress 3.0, my past work as a WordPress core developer, my WordPress plugins, microformats, and a smattering of other topics. My interview should be up later tonight.

Joost and Frederick do a great job with the interviews, so if you haven’t already, you should subscribe to the WordPress Community Podcast and give it a listen!

UPDATE 9:30 p.m. EST: The show notes are up now!

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

WordPress Code Spelunking

By Dougal | Published: February 18, 2010

Earlier today, I finished up a WordPress plugin that I’ve been working on for a client.  Without divulging too many details, I’ll say that it wasn’t a huge project, nor was it overly complicated, but it was interesting. One fun thing about working on projects for clients, is that it often gives you a chance to explore areas that you might not have looked too closely at on your own.

Continue reading this article…

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Bing Maps Photosynth Mashup

By Dougal | Published: February 12, 2010

I’ve always been a big fan of Google Maps. But stuff like this is could sway me into using Bing Maps on a more regular basis:

Microsoft is combining geo-tagged, Creative Commons licensed photographs from Flickr, and integrating them with Bing Maps using their awesome Photosynth technology.

To try this feature yourself, you’ll need the Silverlight browser plugin.

Posted in Tech | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

WordPress 3.0 Multisite Terminology

By Dougal | Published: January 25, 2010

One of the big changes coming in WordPress 3.0 is the merge of the WordPress MU code into the standard stand-alone WordPress codebase. When WordPress 3.0 is released, you will be able to choose to install it either as a single site, or in multi-site mode. With the migration from WordPress MU (MultiUser) to WordPress 3.0 (Multisite), I think there is a need for us to clarify some terminology. On the wp-hackers mailing list, I’ve seen several instances where people used the word “site” to mean different things, depending on who is writing, and the context of what they are trying to say.There is some overlap currently between how we discuss an individual site within the setup, versus the overall system which contains those sites.
Continue reading this article…

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Recipe: Moroccan Chicken with Rice

By Dougal | Published: January 22, 2010

Let’s take a break from the tech talk, and I’ll share a recipe with you. No, not a programming recipe, but the food kind. Yes, sometimes I cook. I generally like cooking, though I’m not so fond of cleaning up the mess afterward. Recently, we had some split chicken breasts that we needed to cook up. I thought about just doing a standard baked chicken, but I wanted something a little. different. After perusing a selection of chicken recipes on SimplyRecipes.com, and reviewing the ingredients we had on hand, I decided to try combining ideas from two different recipes: Moroccan Chicken with Lemon and Olives and Chicken and Rice Casserole.

In our case, I was cooking for seven people (myself, my wife, her parents, and our three kids). We had two family packs of chicken breasts (4 split breasts per pack, at about a pound per breast), so I knew I was going to have to adjust some measurements. I had to make some best-guess changes based on the amount of chicken I was cooking, and the ingredients I had available. First, here’s the recipe as I actually prepared it, and afterwards I’ll discuss what changes I’ll probably make next time we make this dish.
See the recipe…

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

jQuery API site using WordPress as CMS

By Dougal | Published: January 19, 2010

I mentioned before that the jQuery project was going to switch from Mediawiki to using WordPress for their online documentation. They’ve recently pulled the trigger on that change, and you can now visit the new WordPress-powered site at: api.jquery.com

Performance and Backend

As mentioned before, we’ve switched away from using a MediaWiki backend to a new WordPress-powered backend. So far we’ve been very impressed with the performance. Every single page on the site is heavily cached and gzipped – with all media being served up from our CDN. We think you’ll find it to be a significant performance improvement over the old docs site.

via Pre Release Day 1 – The 14 Days of jQuery.

This seems to be an excellent example of a site using WordPress as a CMS. Each API method is created as a post, and they use categories liberally to make it easier for users to locate the methods they need based on usage. There’s also a nice AJAX live-search that narrows down results as you type. Obviously, they are using a custom tailored theme, and a permalink structure that produces easy to remember bookmarks like “api.jquery.com/slideDown/“. As an added bonus, they get user comments and an easier way to manage spam. Nice!

I imagine that there is more going on behind the scenes to help them manage the documentation structure of each API method, code examples, and demonstrations. Maybe some day we can coax them into giving us some more details about that.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Plugin Pages

By Dougal | Published: January 13, 2010

I have finally gotten around to adding proper pages on this site to provide information about my WordPress plugins. It’s still a work-in-progress, but it’s at least at a point that they are useful. When I get a chance, I’ll document the methods I used to automate things. But basically, I’ve created a couple of page templates, and I’m using the Plugin Info plugin to automagically bring in plugin metadata from the wordpress.org plugin repository.

The main Plugins page lists each plugin, with the plugin name and version, number of downloads so far, and an excerpt of the plugin description. On each plugin detail page, you get the full description, changelog, download link, and other stats, such as the minimum and last-tested WordPress versions.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

WordCamp Atlanta

By Dougal | Published: January 9, 2010

As I begin writing this, Jane Wells is delivering her keynote at WordCamp Atlanta, speaking about the upcoming changes in WordPress 3.0. On the one hand, WordPress releases are ’serial’, so an 3.0 release doesn’t necessarily have any bigger changes than when we move from 2.8 to 2.9. It’s just the next step after the 2.9 release. But, that said, there are big changes coming. One of the biggest is going to be the merge of the single-site version of the code and the WordPress-MU code, which will now be referred to as “multi-site” capability. Other new bits will include the “Core Plugins”, which will be a set of plugins cultivated and updated along with the main core code, changes to menu management, more support for custom post types, and a new default theme, dubbed ‘2010′. There will probably be a handful of other smaller changes, but not included at this time is the revamp of the Media Manager, which will probably wait until version 3.1.

With this release, the core team is trying to set a more structured, focused standard for how to get everything done. At the last developer chat, the scope of development was set to those features mentioned above. Setting a strict feature scope this early in the kickoff of a new release is a new thing, and I think it will turn out to be a good thing.

I’ve been wanting for a while to get back into more involvement with WordPress development, so I’ve volunteered (along with several others) to help out with the “Healthcheck” Core Plugin. This plugin will examine the configuration of your server and alert you to anything that might prevent certain features from working correctly, or that might cause problems in the future (such as old versions of PHP or MySQL).

In other news, there are going to be some updates to the wordpress.org website, including improvement to the Ideas forum, and some BuddyPress functionality, including user profiles for all regiestered users. WordCamp.org will also get some BuddyPress love and see new features.

As usual, the future holds some very exciting changes. But I’m particularly happy to see that there is not only progress happening in how the code is handled, but in how the community is shepherded. I think just about everyone would agree that WordPress would not be where it is today without its great user and developer community. So, if you have ever contributed a patch, reported a bug, suggested a new feature, or even just thanked somebody who has — you’re a part of the community. Thanks!

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Merry Christmas!

By Dougal | Published: December 24, 2009

I had hoped to post about some things before things got too hectic, but that didn’t happen. But I wanted to at least wish everybody a Merry Christmas (or which ever holiday variant you prefer), and a Happy New Year!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 3 Comments