WordPress Snippets

The results of the WordPress 2.9 Features Vote came out today, where Jane Wells wrote that over 3,500 people participated in the poll.  Although only the first question was mandatory, Media albums and Easier embedding of Media were clearly priorities for most as they took up more than a third of the votes (34%).

I would have voted for the same thing – particularly for embedding media – since I tend to write and embed about third party content. For that reason I would probably have voted for a better media interface as well.

What is worrying though is that out of the 3284 people (apx 91% of total voters) who answered the 4th question about whether media features such as Albums should be:

• A Core or standard feature of WordPress; or
• Bundled with core as a plugin; or
• Left as a plugin in the Repository.

56.2% said this should be in core! Thankfully there were still many who thought otherwise, but it seems most of these were developers rather than users.

This doesn’t mean that the demi-gods of WordPress development are going to go with the flow, as they said that:

Clearly this issue deserves more discussion, and the concept of how we move toward a system of canonical plugins and/or core “packages” intended for different use cases (CMS, photoblog, portfolio, etc) will be a big topic in the months ahead.

However, as a user, I really believe that if media features were introduced, ‘canonical’ plugins that are either left in the Repository or – at a push – bundled are the way forward for several reasons:

• They will still ‘hook’ or work effectively with Core, and presumably this will be because-
• Plugin development may be done in-house or the third-party developer will work closely with the WordPress team; and
• No excess code in Core for features not everyone uses, as the plugins are mainly standalone, which reduces the size of the core download; and
• Avoids unnecessary code running in the background; whilst
• Minimises the possibility of bloated code.

No doubt WordPress will  investigate the routes taken by other software such as Gallery by Bharat Mediratta, which offers 3 different packages for everyday users to download – the ‘Full’ package is more than twice the size of the ‘Minimal’ package – so the compromise is the ‘Typical’ package to ’satisfy the demands of most Gallery users’.

But having more than one download will probably confuse new entrants to the WordPress user base (I know the Gallery one confuses me – then again, I am easily confused) and I imagine that quite often the boundaries for ‘use cases’  – CMS, photoblog, etc. – might be too easily blurred to offer packages on that particularly basis, but I am open to other thoughts.

This is why the WordPress core is currently great as it is – because it is flexible enough for users to go opt for one or more ‘use cases’, and can be downloaded and installed in (less than) 5 minutes – all in a tidy 2.2MB package.

By contrast, Joomla’s standard download is 6.4 MB and even Gallery’s ‘typical’ package is some 4MB.

For these reasons, I believe that the new Media Features should not be in Core and should be offered separately as plugins. Leaving them in the Repository or ‘Repo’ would be most ideal in my mind, because the Core download size will be smaller.

Then the issue will be simply how to include these features as an option within a user-friendly interface for users to simply ‘activate’, whereby WordPress core can then download and install them automatically, rather like the Core ‘upgrade’ system now in use.

p/s: More opinions and related posts can be found in the Pingback section at the bottom of the official blog post, including a dedicated WP Tavern thread and even one discussing the presentation of data.

Our humble website, WPSnippets, is hardly the first stop WordPress fans will visit when they look up information regarding their beloved WordPress (I recommend visiting WP Tavern and WLTC for that!)  but I do still feel it is important to get the word out as a much as possible about this year’s:

WordPress Plugin Competition 2009

This is an annual competition which, I believe, began last year and has both directly and indirectly resulted in some of the most useful plugins for 2008 – I believe the concept behind one may even have been somewhat ‘integrated’ into WordPress core – it was that good!

The incentive for plugin authors across the world is firstly, a place to publicise their plugin in a forum outside of the WordPress Plugin Directory – particularly to non developers (including myself). Secondly, as WPEngineer pointed out (with thanks to WPTavern for the Retweet), your plugin will receive a lot of feedback. I think he sums it up nicely:

… your Plugin surely gets more attention and more feedback, as I have experienced in the past year. This year should be at least the same amount of feedback as last year, where each plugin was inspect by OZH. Also this year, you can expect to get some feedback from Ozh as you can see at contribution to the Plugin Competition. Sure, the opinion of Ozh can be different then yours, but his feedback is crucial. As a developer, I have learned a lot from last year, my knowledge expanded.

Just to recap on last year’s plugins, the personal highlights for me from 2008 were (in no particular order):

• WP Comment Remix by Jason DeVelvis
• Role Scoper by Kevin Behrens
• Snazzy Archives & WP Wall by Vladimir Prelovac
• Tabbed Widgets Plugin by Kaspas Dambis
• WP Sentry by Pete Holiday
• postTabs by Leo Germani

for the simple reason that they were really quite innovative and ones I personally found very useful (or potentially useful) for my own sites (fan and private club ones) and these were to name but a few of the multiple plugins that were submitted.

2009 has yet to receive the same level of submissions, which is surprising, given the incentives listed above and some lovely prizes to boot. Hopefully this is because all this year’s potential competition participants are furiously writing up a changelog before posting their entry. :p

As a non developer, some of the new submissions that have caught my eye to date are:

• Twitter Friendly Links by Konstantin Kovshenin
• Max Image Size Control by  Hiroaki Miyashita
• Changelogger by Oliver Schlöbe
• Advanced Export for WP and WPmu by Ron Rennick

where Changelogger is a plugin that I believe really offers something that should be in WordPress core, and Advanced Export for WP and WPmu will be such an essential tool when moving or even revamping a site as you can select specific content.

The deadline for submissions is the end of July 2009, so – as a WordPress fan who loves plugin developers and their plugins – please can I humbly implore you to send in your plugin for the WordPress Plugin Competition 2009!

Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

It has only been 4 months since the Beijing Olympics 2008, but for some reason it seems to have happened so very long ago. Perhaps it’s because of the credit crunch and lots of real life things happening, but my online activity has really dwindled. This includes the continuation of the series on the Closing Ceremony, where this post has been in ‘draft’ for far too long without actually having ever been written up.

Above is a photo of the 7 sopranos who serenaded us all with their rendition of the Chinese folk song 今夜月明 or The Moon is Bright Tonight. Out of all the performances that night, I have to say this sweet love song was my absolute favourite performance of the evening (more photos of some of the other performances can be found at the end of this post) Their voices (and their outfits) were absolutely gorgeous!

This is the list of the soprano performers:

張也, 湯燦, 張燕, 陳思思, 雷佳, 王麗達,哈輝

The original plan was to introduce all of the singers individually, but I think it’s safe to say that they are all very accomplished sopranos and perhaps it will be fine to leave it at that, since on a personal level, the actual song and their rendition of this particular arrangement was the most wonderful part.

I have actually recorded the song from the BBC broadcast of the Closing Ceremony, and find it so very uplifting to listen to. The song is sung by a girl to a boy in the mountains, and she sings about the magnificently bright moon that has risen, which reminds her of the one she is missing. And as the wind sweeps up to the hills, she asks if he can hear her calling to him.

At least, that’s my interpretation of the original lyrics, although CRI Online has helpfully provided the names of the people who brought us this arrangement (卞留念、趙兆、孟可 and 尹宜公) I have decided to edit the original lyrics and post what the sopranos actually sang here:

(恩噠恩噠 哩羅來哩羅來)
(恩噠恩噠 哩羅來哩羅來)
月亮出來亮旺旺亮旺旺 （哪呀咿哪呀咿也 哪呀咿哪呀咿也)
想起我的阿哥
在深山 (噠 噠 哩羅來哩羅來）
(哪呀咿 哪呀咿也 哪呀咿呦呀咿也)
哥想月亮天上走天上走 哥 (哪呀咿哪呀咿也)
哥哥啊 (來啦哩 來啦哩 來啦哩 來啦哩羅來哩羅來）
山下小河淌水
清悠悠 (哪呀咿哪呀咿也 啊呦呀呦 咿也)

月亮出來亮旺旺 亮旺旺 月亮出來亮旺旺 亮旺旺
亮旺 亮旺 亮旺 亮旺……
月亮出來亮旺旺

一陣清風 吹上坡 吹上坡 哥啊 哥啊 哥啊
你可聽見阿妹叫阿哥……
阿哥 月亮出來 月亮 月亮

It is a little shorter than the original, and the words that you can see within brackets interweaves between the actual lyrics, and are nonsense if taken literally, but musically they are a perfect accompaniment for the song.

If you would like to be reminded why this song is so good, feel free to listen to the mp3 recording that I mentioned earlier from the BBC broadcast below. Alternatively, you can also download The Moon is Bright Tonight for your own enjoyment as well. It is really something worth listening , especially in the winter months, in my humble opinion, and it would be great to find out if you thought the same too!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download the mp3 recording of The Moon is Bright Tonight from the BBC’s broadcast of the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony or click on the ‘play’ button above to listen to the mp3 on the site!

Unless I get round to writing about the Handover to London, this may be the last post on the Olympics 2008 for the time being. But I think, as the BBC’s Matt Slater summed up so eloquently in his blog post:

The closing ceremony was absolutely in keeping with everything I have seen in Beijing over the last three and a bit weeks: staggering in scale, perfectly choreographed, visually stunning and absolutely on time.

p/s: Some of the other photos we promised at the start of this post from the Beijing Olympics 2008 Closing Ceremony including Jackie Chan, Karen Mok, Andy Lau, Joey Yung and other really big name (old-skool) celebrities singing 遠方的客人請你留下來 or Please stay, Guests from Afar.

Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

And some of the 75 acrobats mimicking flames as they performed on the 25-metre tall Memory Tower.

Photo courtesy of azzurri_nr1

Last but not least, Placido Domingo and 宋祖英 (Song Zuying) singing the duet of 愛的火焰 or Flames of Love together.

Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

And so the Beijing Olympics 2008 have officially drawn to a close with the handover to London for 2012. I’m sure many many people dropped what they were doing to watch as much of the closing ceremony as possible, I know I did. So, what did you think of the Closing Ceremony?

It wasn’t quite on the same scale as the Opening Ceremony - a mere 200 drum performers and 1,100 silver bell dancer for the first ‘Reunion’-themed part, compared to the 2,008 drummers at the start of the Opening Ceremony. In all, 7,000 performers took part in the Closing Ceremony and they didn’t even get a chance to rehearse in the stadium in the past few days because of the Athletics.

Photo courtesy of One Ben K

It was also a very modern performance compared to how the Olympics were introduced, and the underlying message was to ‘greet and welcome guests’. The music was gorgeous – delicate and upbeat in parts, contemplative the next. The cinematic effect was beautiful, as expected of Zhang Yimou, the director. At this point, I was impressed by the 60 light wheels that ‘rolled’ into the darkened stadium, traveling along path of lights formed by the dancers, which reminded me a little of the Wall of China (even if it wasn’t intended)

Photo courtesy of rich115

As the formation changed, they were joined by followed by 200 bouncing and flying performers, which were supposed to reflect the more modern and extreme sports in the Olympics (according to the on-going BBC commentary) and finally, the opening of the closing ceremony ended as the dancers formed four passages to greet the incoming flag bearers of each country, and then the athletes.

Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

In contrast to the formal entrance of the athletes at the Opening Ceremony, everyone was allowed to run in freely. Needless to say everyone pretty much looked ecstatic and cheered at the camera This was followed by the award ceremony for the winners of the Men’s Marathon event (a new world record was set by the gold medalist WANSIRU Samuel Kamau!) and a big thank you was given to all the representatives of all the volunteers who had worked so hard to support the games.

So much more followed, that I think it would be appropriate to split this post into a few sections and write about the individual performances that really stood out for me, such as the London Handover and the musical rendition of The Moon is Bright Tonight. Please stay tuned for the next part of this series!

Having been overwhelmed with Olympic fever, it’s been awhile since I’ve made a post relating to WordPress, but the community is as active as ever, especially with the release of WordPress 2.6.1 and the final round of voting for the WordPress Plugin Competition.

This will, fortunately for you all, be a short post with what maybe a catchy title! The good book ‘how to write a good blog post’ sites teach us that a catchy title is very helpful in attracting the attention of browsers. Whether this will be one of the popular posts as a result remains to be seen, but there is a point to this post and the title: it turns out I have been spelling that special word wrong.

That word, of course, is:

WordPress

I’ve always spelt it as Wordpress, and never thought more of it, so I was utterly mortified when I started reading Lorelle’s excellent article Tips on Writing Good WordPress Tips. The first point she made (as convincingly as always) was that:

WordPress is a trademark and thus must be spelled appropriately.

That sentence came like a bolt from the heavens (or stepping on a garden rake) and I was left with a sinking feeling in my stomach – just hours before I had chided someone on the WordPress Forums about getting the name of a plugin wrong, and yet I was already making an even more fundamental mistake about something I read about almost everyday - WordPress!

That feeling of guilt happened to coincide with me reading a new post by Mark Ghosh on WLTC called Be Kind, Educate, (which is just as inspirational as Matt Mullenweg’s Price of Freedom) where he analyses why there are so many fans of WordPress, and nature of the WP community. His last point, and the title of his article, credits Lorelle as an inspiration for his new pledge:

to be as kind as I can be … to educate everyone that cares to listen

So at the end of this post, not only am I going to spell WordPress correctly from now on, I am also going to endeavour to be a lot more patient and polite when I reply on the forums!

p/s: Apologies to anyone I’ve offended on the forums from before.

p/s2: I think I’ve patched up this site for WordPress, but if you spot any omissions, please let me know!