If you’re in the San Francisco area join us at the Yahoo! Brickhouse for a WordPress meetup this Wednesday. This’ll actually be my first time at the Brickhouse, but I hear they have some mean Wii players.
Jun
30
I mentioned previously that the XML-RPC and Atom blog APIs would be disabled by default when WordPress 2.6 is released. This was a matter of some debate within the community, and there has been some clarification:
- The APIs will not be automatically disabled for sites upgrading from older versions. Since the APIs have previously been ‘on’ by default, they will continue to function.
For new installs of WordPress 2.6 and later, there will be an option presented at install-time to enable the APIs.Or not. They seem to have removed that between Beta 1 and Beta 2.- There will be options in the
Writesettings to enable or disable XML-RPC posting and Atom API posting individually.
This sounds like the most reasonable path to make this change without causing disruption for those who have been using client tools like Ecto, MarsEdit, or Windows Live Writer (or third-party web services which can post to blogs, like Flickr or Delicious) to post to their blogs.
Also, though this change is being made under the moniker of a security improvement, that is not to imply that the current API code is not secure. It is simply a pretty standard practice to turn off services that are not used, just as when building a dedicated email server, you wouldn’t turn on FTP unless you absolutely needed it. Stats from WordPress.com have shown that only about 5% of its users utilize the client APIs, so it doesn’t make sense to automatically turn it on for the 95% who aren’t using them.
Jun
27
PhoneFactor is a WordPress plugin that provides an additional layer of security when logging in to your WordPress site.
It’s a pretty cool system. When you log in to your WordPress blog with PhoneFactor enabled, you receive a phone call asking you to press # to authorize. When you do so, you are logged in. If you do not, then the login attempt fails.
Basically, this means someone needs to get your username, password and phone in order to log in to your WordPress site as you.
Crowd Favorite worked with the PhoneFactor team to build this integration on their API layer. This was a fun project for us - it’s always nice to enhance WordPress by integrating features from another service.
Besides building the integration with the API to authenticate via phone, we also built the PhoneFactor registration step right into the WordPress admin so that the user wouldn’t have to leave the WordPress admin when activating the plugin and getting it set up. I think it’s a much better user experience.
We integrated some instructional banners into the WordPress admin pages to let people know the next steps to getting things set up after activating the plugin. We also built in some more advanced user features like whitelisting IP addresses so that you don’t have to use PhoneFactor authentication if you’re logging in from your home machine.
The download and more information are available at the WordPress Plugin repository on wordpress.org.
Enjoy!
Jun
27
I’m going!
Looking forward to both days events
Jun
24
After some last minute changes (and upsetting a few people) there is now a new venue for the WordCamp UK 2008 event.
The new venue is The Studio, it is still in Birmingham, and in fact quite close to the previously planned venue. The Studio has a directions map and their main web site lists all the features. The event will be hosted in ‘Atrium Bar’ and the adjoining ‘Open’ room.
Someone kindly set up a Google Maps directions page.
For full details go to the WordCamp UK wiki.
Jun
24
Last night Ryan Boren announced the release of WordPress 2.6 Beta 1. At first glance, you probably wouldn’t notice much difference between versions 2.5 and 2.6. The two biggest new features are Post Revisions, which saves a history of edits made to each post, and support for Gears, which greatly speeds up working with the admin screens.
Other changes of note:
- Support for the XML-RPC and Atom client APIs is turned off by default now. If you use an external client for posting, you’ll need to specifically turn these features on, under
Settings/Writing. - Impoved support for SSL access to the admin screens.
- When you are selecting themes, you now get to view a preview of how your site looks with the new theme before commiting to the change.
- The return of the “Press This” bookmarklet (find it in the sidebar of the
Writepage). Drag the link to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, and use it to quickly post about sites you visit. - More avatar options. The Gravatar service now supports displaying MonsterID, Wavatar, or Identicon icons in place of the default icon for those who don’t have a personalized Gravatar. These options are selectable under
Settings/Discussion. My Easy Gravatars plugin can support this as well, though I’ll probably update it to use the new built-in settings, rather than its own. I’ll write that up later. - Improved plugin management. Active and inactive plugins are now listed separately. You now have the abiliity to “bulk activate” or “bulk deactivate” plugins. You can also delete unused plugins at the click of a button. (Now all we need is the ability to search and install plugins from the Extend directory right from our admin! Maybe in 2.7?)
And there are other assorted improvements, such as updates to the latest jQuery and jQuery UI libraries, updates to the latest TinyMCE editor, improvements to Page and Category management, and as always, general performance enhancements.
It is a beta, so there are still quirks being hammered out (personally, I’ve observed issues with the theme preview, and with deleting plugins). So don’t use this on a “critical” production web site yet. I’m running it here, but obviously, my personal blog isn’t critical, and I’ve always got backups available for when I screw something up. 
Jun
23
The features we slated for 2.6 have been in the repository for awhile now, so we’re going to start our beta cycle in preparation for a mid-July release. Get Beta 1 here. 2.6 isn’t a big release like 2.5 was, but it has a few new features for you.
- Post Revisioning
- A “Press This” bookmarklet for tumblelog style quick posting
- Caching of static files with Gears for faster Admin page loads
- A new and improved image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
- Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
- Built-in word counting in the post editor
- The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
- XML-RPC API for changing blog options
- Better SSL support for the Admin
- Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories admin pages.
- The ability to relocate your content directory
- The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
- Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
- Customizable default avatars
- Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
- Check box range selection with shift-click
- TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes
- jQuery 1.2.6 with some nice performance improvements
- jQuery UI 1.5
- Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements
Enjoy, and thanks for testing.
Jun
23
Last fall Crowd Favorite had the opportunity to work with OpenedHand1 to redesign their web site. Their site is powered by WordPress and we did the design and created some custom theme features for them.
This was a fairly straightforward build. We created several different designs, went through a few revisions, detailed the custom features that were needed, and got cranking on them. With OpenedHand being located in Europe, all development was remote and all communication was done via e-mail.
Unlike some projects where we implement a design and configure it on their production server, in this case we created the theme for them and handed it off to them to set up. They are quite technical, so the configuration and set-up was not difficult for them and I was pleased that they were able to implement what we delivered without needing to ask a lot of questions. That indicates to me that we did a good job packaging and providing installation notes - things that are always a little hard to self-evaluate.
The OpenedHand team also made a couple of minor changes on their own to what we delivered to them before they put the new site live. This was very gratifying to me as well.
When you build things, you try to do so in such a way that they are easily maintained and modified. When your client is able to make changes without needing to ask for help, that’s generally a good sign that you’ve succeeded.
- They do some cool stuff, be sure to check them out. [back]
Jun
23
michel v — intraordinaire.com posted a photo:
Colourful dolls sold on the street in Khiva, Uzbekistan. September 2007.
Jun
22
For the Top Gear fans out there, the new Top Gear blog is the latest WordPress.com VIP. Vroom!