Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

WordPress, web development, and world domination.

I was Web 2.0 before Web 2.0

Jan122009

Just about 7 years ago, Brent Ashley was experimenting with some dynamic browser/server communications using Javascript and IFRAMEs. This was one of the early techniques would later evolve into what we now call AJAX. Brent used this remote scripting to create a live chat that you could embed in your own blog.

Congratulations to Dougal for being the first to publish a new BlogChat. There are others on the way, too. I’ll blog them when I’m given the go-ahead.

via brentashley » 2002 » February.

Later, Brent and Tim Aiello turned this idea into a hosted BlogChat service. After all this time, it’s now being laid to rest. I ran the chat on my blog for a while, but eventually took it out, because I was frequently getting chat requests while I was trying to work, and I found it disruptive. However, it’s fun to recall that I was doing Web 2.0 before anybody was calling it Web 2.0.

2009-01-12 15:45:00 # Comments Off on I was Web 2.0 before Web 2.0

Book Review Poll

Jan062009

I have some more books available to review, this time, a selection from Apress. I can’t decide which one I want to look at first, so I’m going to leave it up to you, my readers.

[poll id=”2″]

WordPress 2.8 features survey

Dec242008

With WordPress 2.7 in the bag, the development team is looking ahead to what features should go into version 2.8. To that end, they have announced a survey to find out what features the community thinks is most important. It presents a list of several possible features (theme browser/installer, performance improvements, sortable columns in edit lists, OpenID integration, etc.) and asks how important you think each one is. Then it asks you to provide your top three priorities.

I think surveys like this are a great way for the WordPress development team to fine-tune the community feedback that they get from the WordPress Ideas Forum. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill out the form. If you want to help drive the direction of the next version of WordPress, go take the survey now.

HeadMeta 1.4

Dec172008

Due to changes in the postmeta API, my HeadMeta plugin had a compatibility problem with some recent versions of WordPress. The problem appeared when there was only one postmeta value (either a ‘head_meta’ or ‘head_link’ entry) associated with a post. If you had multiple entries, or used the ‘keywords’ shortcut, the problem did not appear.

HeadMeta 1.4 fixes this problem, and also adds a ‘description’ shortcut for generating a description <meta> tag. It also fixes a bug which would generate an empty ‘keywords’ <meta> tag, even when no keyword metadata was associated with the post.

If you aren’t already familiar with HeadMeta, it’s a simple plugin which allows you to add <meta> and <link> tags to the <head> segment of individual posts or pages, usually for SEO purposes. There are other plugins which do much more, but this one is small, and doesn’t try to get terribly complicated. All data is managed via the ‘Custom Fields’ section of the post/page editing screen in WordPress.

Download HeadMeta from WordPress Extend.

WordPress 2.7 Released

Dec112008

WordPressWell, that didn’t take long 🙂

With a few last minute fixes since Release Candidate 2, WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” is officially released. This is probably one of the most ambitious releases to date, in particular due to the radically redesigned backend interface. After much testing and feedback, I think the team has given us a very professional looking, flexible, and consistent interface that should serve us for the foreseeable future.

Besides the new user interface, there are performance speedups, and a ton of other improvements and new features. Some of the new things you’ll find are:

  • Sticky posts
  • Nested comments
  • Comment paging (display N comments per page)
  • Reply to comments directly from the admin review
  • Keyboard navigation for moderating comments
  • Draggable/configurable modules in the Dashboard and Post/Page editors
  • Built-in WordPress upgrade system

And of course, there are some other goodies under the hood that I can’t remember right now.

As I’ve mentioned previously, due to some of the backend changes, it’s possible that some plugins might not work correctly with WordPress 2.7. You can check the Plugin Compatibility List on the Codex to find out about many popular plugins. The only plugin I had a problem with was Drain Hole, and I noted a quick fix on the Codex page.

I’m pretty excited about this release, as I think the new interface finally puts some real polish into the system that we were missing before. I’m also looking forward to taking time to poke through the rest of the system and find other new features and plugin hooks that I haven’t had a chance to discover yet. What’s your favorite new feature?

WordPress 2.7 RC 2

Dec102008

WordPress 2.7 RC 2 is now available. There have been nearly 150 bugfixes since RC1, including improvements to the backend styling, RTL fixes, core and plugin updater fixes, improvements to categegory and tag handling, and much more. Barring any major new bugs being discovered, this will likely be the last release candidate before the official 2.7 release. Huzzah!

WordPress 2.7 Coming Soon!

Dec032008

WordPress die-hards everywhere are anxiously awaiting the official release of WordPress 2.7, which should be very soon now. A few days ago, WordPress 2.7 RC 1 was announced, and this Friday, Automattic will roll out the latest code on wordpress.com to help flush out any remaining issues that need to be addressed. I’ve been running the new code here for about a month, and I love how much more professional the backend interface looks now.

WordPress 2.7 User Interface

There are a lot of changes in this version, and I have run into one plugin that needs modification to run in WP 2.7 (Drain Hole). Some of the less adventurous among you might want to put in the time to set up a test install before upgrading your production sites, just to be sure that your themes and plugins run as expected. But I figure that one malfunctioning plugin out of fourty is a pretty good ratio, so chances are good that your sites will be fine with the upgrade. There is a page on the Codex to track WordPress 2.7 Plugin Compatibility that you can check to find about some specific plugins.

Have you been testing WP 2.7? What do you think — what are the things like like/dislike the most?

WordPress 2.6.5 Released

Nov252008

WordPressThe WordPress team released WordPress 2.6.5 earlier today. This release addresses a potential XSS (cross-site scripting) attack under some server configurations, plus adds some bugfixes for some other minor issues. As noted in the official announcement, there was no official 2.6.4 release. There was an attempt to fool people into downloading a fake release under that number, so it has been skipped in the official release numbering, to avoid confusion.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out the WordPress project entry on Freshmeat. Freshmeat is a site which tracks the latest versions of various open source projects. By registering on the site, you can subscribe to your favorite projects, and receive updates by email whenever a new release is announced. While you’re there, don’t forget to rate your favorite projects (via either the rating dropdown on the project page, or the project toolbar icon that looks like a speedometer on the main page project listing).

WordPress for Business Bloggers sample chapter

Nov242008

download

Download: documents/WordPressBookChapter5.pdf
Version: 0.1
Updated: November 24, 2008
Size: 0 bytes

Powered by Drain Hole

As a followup to my review of the book WordPress for Business Bloggers, I am able to make a sample chapter available to my readers. This is chapter 5, “Content is King.” This chapter shows that while the book does focus on business blogging, much of the advice is applicable to any type of blog.

This section covers suggestions on writing good headlines, post length and frequency, using categories and tags, creating an “About” page, and backing up your site (among other things). This chapter is a pretty good representative sample of the book. It contains general advice and suggestions, along with technical information about how to perform certain functions in WordPress, an example of using a third-party plugin (Configurable Tag Cloud), and information about how to backup and restore your database using phpMyAdmin.

My thanks to Packt Publishing for providing the sample chapter for my readers to check out!