Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

Tags and Categories in WordPress 2.3

Sep222007

Since the upcoming WordPress 2.3 release will debut the new tagging system, I thought I’d take some time to address what it means to use “tags” versus using “categories”. These things mean different things to different people, as it’s really just a matter of how you want to use them. But let’s examine what tags and categories are, how they are similar, how they are different, and why you might choose to use one system over the other, or use them together.

Continue reading →

WordPress 2.3 Beta 1

Aug292007

As announced on the dev blog, WordPress 2.3 Beta 1 is now available for download and testing. Some of the features of 2.3 include automatic notification for plugin and core code version updates, built-in tags support, faster javascript, and SEO-friendly URL redirection.

The new tag system includes an importer for those using the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin, and importers for a couple of other popular plugins are in the works. There is also a conversion process available for those who would like to convert their existing categories to tags. Due to the flexibility of the new tag system (taxonomy system is more accurate), I expect we will see an explosion of new tagging plugins.

There have been reports of compatibility issues with a few plugins due to the changes to the category system (plugins that only used the API functions should be okay, but those that used direct SQL queries may break). Also, some file moves in the admin area have affected a few other plugins. Please report problems on Trac, and document compatible plugins on the Codex.

Sandbox Design Competition Winners

Aug072007

The Sandbox Designs Competition is over, and the results are in. The overall winner was the Sandpress theme. That theme was one of my favorites. When I get a few minutes to back through them again, I’ll try to write up my list of favorites, and what I like and dislike about each theme.

All in all, there were some very nice designs in the competition. I could tell that the designers all put a lot of work into their designs. Even the designs that didn’t manage to collect any of the judges small pool of points deserve kudos, and I encourage everyone to look at all of the entries, not just the official winners.

WordPress 2.2.2 Released

Aug052007

There is a new security & bugfix release: WordPress 2.2.2. There are no new features in this version. Since it is a security release, all users should upgrade as soon as possible. Read the original announcement for full details. Download now!

Also, as mentioned in the original announcement, there is a new version in the 2.0 legacy branch: WordPress 2.0.11. This branch is maintained for the Debian package, and is also the only supported release which works with MySQL versions prior to 4.0.

14+ Awesome WordPress-powered sites

Jul162007
WooThemes - WordPress themes for everyone
[A screenshot of welovewp.com]

WeLoveWP.com highlights great looking WordPress sites, and it’s powered by WordPress, too!

From time to time, someone will hear that I’m involved with WordPress, and ask me a few questions about it. Some people already have a WordPress-powered site (either self-hosted, or on wordpress.com), and some have never actually used it, but they’ve heard of it. Often, they just want me to show them a WordPress site, so they can see what it looks like. Occasionally, someone will ask whether any big companies or famous people use WordPress. And one thing I often hear is along the lines of, it just does weblogs, if I have a business site, I’d want to use something else, right? But in reality, WordPress is an excellent tool for managing a business site. When I tell people this, they’ll often ask me for some examples of non-blog sites using WordPress.

So I end up searching for old bookmarks, looking through my feed archives, and checking the Codex until I find some suitable choices. Likewise, if someone just wants to see some examples of WP sites, I want to show them something that really stands out.

Now I’m finally going to document a really nice selection of sites that I can point them to for several examples, a sort of “Best of WordPress”. Some sites just look good. Some are examples of famous celebrities, companies, or organizations. Others showcase WP in a non-blog capacity. In no particular order, here is my list of Awesome WordPress Sites:

Continue reading →

Sandbox Designs Competition: deadline approaching

Jul092007

I’ve mentioned the Sandbox theme for WordPress a couple of times before, but I’ve neglected to point out the Sandbox Designs Competition that is going on right now. A few weeks ago, the total prize money stood at over $1600, with 1st prize netting $750.

Sandbox has a really good structure, with lots of semantic classes (and microformats) added at key points. This allows the clever theme designer to turn their site into a chameleon. You can theme based on the type of page being viewed (blog posts, single post, pages, archives, categories, search page, etc.). And you can theme certain posts based on their categories, their authors, or even by the season, or time of day when the post was published.

I’m hoping that we’ll see some really stunning designs that use these capabilities in interesting ways. There’s a strong chance that Sandbox will be included as a standard theme in a future WordPress release, which would expose your work to an extremely large audience. How’s that for some extra incentive? Do you think you have good CSS chops? Design your entry and get it submitted. Just make sure you get your entry in before the July 29 deadline. And note that the deadline is 12:00am UTC, which is July 28, 8:00pm EDT, or 5:00pm PDT.

FWIW, this site is running Sandbox (albeit, an older, and slightly customized version). But I certainly wouldn’t try to hold this site up as a paragon of good design. Make something better, okay?

Typography design patterns for the web

Jul052007

When I’m putting a new web site together, one thing that sometimes bugs me is choosing which fonts to use. I’ll typically throw together a list of fonts that I like, decide to use this set of serif fonts for these page elements, and that set of sans-serif fonts for those other elements, select some fallback choices for my stylesheet, and let it go at that. Obviously, I’m no designer — or I’d be saying ‘typeface’ instead of ‘font’ — but I’d like to be able to make ‘better’ choices for my fonts.

I’ve done a little bit of searching, but I haven’t found what I’m looking for. I’ve found plenty of font surveys of which fonts are commonly found on Windows vs Mac vs Linux. I’ve found lots of discussions about things that affect readability, like font size, line length and line height. But it’s all very general, I’m looking for something more practical.

What I’m looking for is a resource that has pre-made sets of font-family definitions. But not just font lists in isolation — a set of font choices for various page elements. These fonts for headers, those fonts for body text, these other fonts for sidebar items, etc. A sort of “font palette” for the web, not unlike many of the color palette utilities that are available. I’m looking for typography design patterns for the web.

Does anything close to that exist? Even if it’s not full sets of font palettes as I envision, if I just had a good set of pre-made, cross-platform font-family definitions, it would be a start. Sure, I could just find well-made web sites that I like and see what fonts they use, but I wouldn’t know if they planned out their font use, or if they picked them as haphazardly as I normally do. I want to find a resource that has documented some lists of font-family selections, with good, cross-platform fallback choices.

I think this is a darned good idea for a web site. If I had the time to work on it, I’d make it myself. It would have a mockup web page skeleton, with some headers, body text, lists, strong and emphasized text, blockquotes, etc., and a selection of font palettes that could be applied, to see how they look. You’d be able to download these palettes as CSS stylesheet rules.

You’d also be able to see how things look if the visitor doesn’t have this or that font installed. The font-family definitions would try to be very complete, with good choices made for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux browsers. Users would be able to add new palettes to the site, and everyone would vote on them. And it would be all Ajaxy and stuff, with glossy buttons, reflected graphics, round corners, and a “beta” label.

There, I’ve laid out the basic project plan. Now, somebody go build it! 🙂

WordPress 2.2.1 Released

Jun212007

WordPress 2.2.1 is now available. Most of the changes are minor bug fixes, however there are some security fixes as well. We can’t stress enough how important it is to upgrade your sites and keep them current so that you aren’t open to attacks. Many people see these “minor” version updates and assume that they don’t need to install them. Mainly it seems to be folks who worry about an upgrade breaking their theme or their plugins. But if the themes and plugins are written properly, this won’t normally be a problem. So, if you are running any version of WordPress older than 2.2.1, go download the new version now.

If you’re curious about what’s changed since 2.2.0, read the list of changes on Trac. Or, you can view the source code changes for all the changed files.