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";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:7:"version";s:3:"2.0";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:7:"channel";a:1:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:61:"
	
	
	
	




















































";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"WordPress Planet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"language";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"en";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"item";a:50:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"WPTavern: How The Focus Project Plans to Enhance Distraction Free Writing in WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32888";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"http://wptavern.com/how-the-focus-project-plans-to-enhance-distraction-free-writing-in-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4521:"<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FocusProjectFeaturedImage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32888]"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32904" src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FocusProjectFeaturedImage.png?resize=650%2C200" alt="Focus Project Featured Image" /></a></p>
<p>One of the <a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/focus/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/focus/">feature plugins</a> under development for possible inclusion to WordPress 4.1 is called <a title="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/29806" href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/29806">Focus</a>. Focus enhances the Distraction Free Writing mode in WordPress. Janneke Van Dorpe is the lead developer for the project with Mark Jaquith and Andrew Ozz contributing as well. Unlike DFW mode in WordPress 4.0, Focus keeps the meta boxes, admin bar, and left hand menu just a mouse swipe away from view.</p>
<a href="http://wptavern.com/how-the-focus-project-plans-to-enhance-distraction-free-writing-in-wordpress#gallery-32888-1-slideshow">Click to view slideshow.</a>
<p>Although the interface surrounding the editor disappears, users can access the admin bar without the surrounding interface showing up. The admin bar and meta boxes below and to the right of the post editor fade away while the menu on the left moves out of view. I don&#8217;t find the animation to be distracting and the menus come back into view quickly.</p>
<p>According to Jaquith, Distraction Free Writing in WordPress has a few issues. He outlines three primary reasons for the changes.</p>
<ol>
<li>The transition to and from it is distracting. It&#8217;s a separate editor and it makes you lose your place.</li>
<li>You don&#8217;t have access to the same editing tools, so you would feel like you had to keep switching back and forth.</li>
<li>It&#8217;s not very discoverable in the first place.</li>
</ol>
<p><span class="message_content">&#8220;Combine those things, and it just wasn&#8217;t compelling. Now, it engages when you type (fixing discoverability), its transition is seamless, but you still have instant access to all the same editing tools and all your regular meta boxes. It&#8217;s the best of both worlds,&#8221; Jaquith told the Tavern. </span></p>
<p>I rarely use DFW mode in WordPress but after using the Focus plugin, I&#8217;m willing to give it a try. I like the fact that meta boxes and the menu are quickly accessible despite being hidden.</p>
<h2>Needs Approval</h2>
<p>John Blackbourn, who is <a title="http://wptavern.com/meet-john-blackbourn-wordpress-4-1-release-lead" href="http://wptavern.com/meet-john-blackbourn-wordpress-4-1-release-lead">leading the release</a> of WordPress 4.1, has to determine whether the project is at a point where it can be merged into core. If it&#8217;s approved, those who update to WordPress 4.1 will see the enhancements currently in the Focus plugin. Once it&#8217;s merged into core, the plan is to use a <a title="http://wptavern.com/create-your-own-custom-pointers-in-the-wordpress-admin" href="http://wptavern.com/create-your-own-custom-pointers-in-the-wordpress-admin">feature pointer</a> to let users know of its existence.</p>
<p>Since disabling DFW mode is as easy as pressing a button in the editor, this is a calculated risk. People who see the editor for the first time might make it their primary means of writing content. This in turn would lead to more users and possible improvements down the road. Even with using a feature pointer, I&#8217;m curious to see how users react to it being enabled after updating to WordPress 4.1.</p>
<h2>How to Contribute to Focus</h2>
<p>If you&#8217;d like to test drive the new DFW mode for WordPress, you can download it from the <a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/focus/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/focus/">plugin directory</a>. If you encounter a bug, you can report it via the plugin&#8217;s <a title="https://github.com/avryl/focus" href="https://github.com/avryl/focus">GitHub page</a>. Alternatively, if you want to provide feedback in real-time, the team has a <a title="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/feature-focus/" href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/feature-focus/">channel on Slack</a> that is actively monitored.</p>
<p>Are you a fan and active user of Distraction Free Writing in WordPress? If so, what do you think of the changes? If you don&#8217;t use Distraction Free Writing, will you consider it due to the changes outlined above?</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 04 Nov 2014 06:35:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"Matt: Sugarman Documentary Director Suicide";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44271";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"http://ma.tt/2014/11/sugarman-director/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:600:"<p>The other day I saw and really enjoyed the great <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/searchingforsugarman/">Searching for Sugarman documentary</a>, which I&#8217;d recommend. While reading more about the entire story of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixto_Rodriguez">Rodriguez</a> I found that tragically the director of the film, Malik Bendjelloul, took his own life this year. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/13/malik-bendjelloul-searching-for-sugar-man">The Observer has a look into his life and his other work, as well as the situation surrounding his death</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 04 Nov 2014 04:59:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"WPTavern: Jetpack 3.2 Introduces Centralized Posting from WordPress.com";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32841";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"http://wptavern.com/jetpack-3-2-introduces-centralized-posting-from-wordpress-com";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6065:"<p>Jetpack 3.2 was <a href="http://wptavern.com/jetpack-3-2-released-introduces-new-site-logo-feature-for-theme-developers" target="_blank">released</a> last week, featuring a new site logo feature for theme authors, bug fixes, and performance improvements. Today the Jetpack team officially <a href="http://jetpack.me/2014/11/03/jetpack-3-2/" target="_blank">announced</a> the release, along with a new feature that wasn&#8217;t mentioned in the changelog.</p>
<h2>Centralized Posting from WordPress.com</h2>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/centralized-posting.png" rel="prettyphoto[32841]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/centralized-posting.png?resize=700%2C316" alt="centralized-posting" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32854" /></a></p>
<p>Self-hosted WordPress sites connected via Jetpack can now publish posts using the WordPress.com post editor. When you visit <a href="http://wordpress.com/post/" title="WordPress.com Post Editor" target="_blank">wordpress.com/post/</a> you&#8217;ll find a dropdown of your sites above the title field. Here you can select a Jetpack-connected site. Once you either save or publish a post, a progress bar crawls across the screen as WordPress.com communicates to your site.</p>
<p>On first look, it seems that WordPress.com is aiming to become a centralized place for publishing WordPress content, regardless of where the site is hosted.</p>
<p>But this begs the question: <strong>Why would I want to post to my self-hosted site from WordPress.com?</strong> Many themes now incorporate customized editor styles to help match the preview to the frontend a little better. The self-hosted post editor also includes better access to the rest of your content and integration with plugins you&#8217;ve added to customize that experience.</p>
<h3>The Idea Behind Centralizing Posting from WordPress.com</h3>
<p>I spoke with Jetpack team member <a href="http://stephanis.info/" target="_blank">George Stephanis</a> regarding the idea and direction behind the new centralized publishing option. He identified a number of complementary purposes for the new feature. &#8220;One is to dogfood the <a href="http://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/" title="WordPress.com REST API" target="_blank">WordPress.com REST API</a>,&#8221; he said. &#8220;By using the REST API instead of the traditional wp-admin means, we can ensure we&#8217;ve covered edge cases in usage and that it&#8217;s appropriate for production usage.&#8221;</p>
<p>He also sees the new posting option as a convenient way to get quick access to any of your sites. &#8220;Another purpose is for users that have fifty sites, and just want to throw quick thoughts up,&#8221; Stephanis said. When you have that many sites, accessing one through WordPress.com can be easier than going to the self-hosted admin and authenticating.</p>
<p>However, he recognizes that centralized publishing is not necessarily beneficial for every site. &#8220;In-depth posts to customized installs will naturally have a better experience going right to their customized wp-admin editor.&#8221;</p>
<p>After testing, I can confirm that it is fully functional for remote publishing, although it leaves somewhat of disconnect between writing and seeing the live content. If you publish content, chances are that you want to visit your site anyway to see it live. Unless you&#8217;re simply saving a quick draft to your site, remote publishing doesn&#8217;t yet appear to have many advantages apart from convenience.</p>
<h3>Experimenting with the WordPress Admin</h3>
<p>The centralized publishing experience is just a first step, Stephanis said. The Jetpack team has more planned. &#8220;There&#8217;s more iterations and ways of managing and writing content that we can slip in more comfortably to the new WordPress.com editor, specifically as it doesn&#8217;t have to support a lot of the old metaboxes and custom stuff that wp-admin has,&#8221; he explained. <strong>&#8220;So it&#8217;s a way to safely iterate, while still maintaining the old wp-admin side.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>The upcoming <a href="https://github.com/wp-api" target="_blank">WP REST API</a> for WordPress core, along with ongoing <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/press-this/" target="_blank">experiments with the Press This feature</a>, will open up many more opportunities for developers to publish to WordPress without using the traditional admin at all. The folks at WordPress.com are experimenting with their own REST API and Stephanis said he is &#8220;eager to see the external APIs converge, as there’s a lot that both current implementations can gain from the other.&#8221;</p>
<p>Centralized publishing isn&#8217;t the first WordPress.com REST API experiment. The <a href="http://wptavern.com/automattic-introduces-postbot-app-for-scheduling-photo-posts" target="_blank">Postbot app</a> introduced users to the possibility of publishing images without the admin. The WordPress.com API team also created <a href="https://developer.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/meet-sulfur/" target="_blank">Sulfer</a>, an open source media manager app built in JavaScript, using the API.</p>
<p>How long before the &#8220;old&#8221; WordPress admin is obsolete? &#8220;The old wp-admin is never going away, from WordPress.com or self-hosted,&#8221; Stephanis said.  &#8220;But in the world of API driven development, this is a big step forward.</p>
<p>&#8220;By ensuring that our WordPress.com Editor can post comfortably to self-hosted sites and WordPress.com sites, that also ensures that third party clients can operate more confidently and that some of the odd quirks and edge cases have been ironed out already.&#8221;</p>
<p>If you want to see the WordPress.com REST API in action, simply log into your account and post to one of your Jetpack-connected sites. Do you think you&#8217;ll use this feature often? Given that it&#8217;s only the first version, how do you think it could be improved to better support self-hosted publishers?</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Nov 2014 20:35:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50:"Akismet: Akismet 3.0.3 for WordPress Available Now";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"http://blog.akismet.com/?p=1738";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"http://blog.akismet.com/2014/11/03/akismet-3-0-3-for-wordpress-available-now/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1414:"<p>Version 3.0.3 of <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the Akismet plugin for WordPress</a> is now available.</p>
<p>This update fixes a bug that could have prevented old spam comments from being deleted, and it gives you more control over how Akismet deletes old spam comments: the maximum age and number per batch are both <a href="https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/akismet/trunk/class.akismet.php?rev=1003398#L259">filterable</a>.  You can also <a href="https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/akismet/trunk/class.akismet.php?rev=987350#L932">disable Akismet&#8217;s debug logging</a> even if you have <code>WP_DEBUG</code> enabled. Lastly, we&#8217;ve removed the &#8220;Check for Spam&#8221; button from the Spam folder; that just seemed reasonable.</p>
<p>To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the WordPress plugins directory</a>.</p><br />  <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/akismet.wordpress.com/1738/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/akismet.wordpress.com/1738/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=blog.akismet.com&blog=116920&post=1738&subd=akismet&ref=&feed=1" width="1" height="1" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Nov 2014 20:00:46 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"Christopher Finke";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"Akismet: October Stats Roundup";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"http://blog.akismet.com/?p=1732";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"http://blog.akismet.com/2014/11/03/october-stats-roundup/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3084:"<p>Akismet had another record-breaking month in October. While in <a href="http://blog.akismet.com/2014/10/01/september-stats-roundup/">September</a> we hit and surpassed the 300-million spam messages per day milestone, in October we saw over <strong>400 million spam messages come through per day</strong> on 12 different days.</p>
<p>Here are the daily stats:</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-1733" src="https://akismet.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/akismet-spam-and-ham-stats-october-2014.png?w=700&h=436" alt="akismet-spam-and-ham-stats-october-2014" /></p>
<p>There was a rise of 44% in the number of spam comments caught from last month, and a 185% rise from last year in October.</p>
<p>In total, <strong>Akismet caught 11,337,365,500 spam messages this month</strong>, and 207,939,000 ham messages. As usual, the amount of legitimate messages going around is much less than spam &#8211; coming in at 1.8% this month.</p>
<div id="attachment_1734" class="wp-caption alignright"><img class="wp-image-1734 size-medium" src="https://akismet.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/tellurian.jpg?w=300&h=119" alt="Tellurian" width="300" height="119" /><p class="wp-caption-text">This is an image from page 390 of &#8220;School funds and school laws of Michigan: with notes and forms&#8221; (1859) published by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/">Internet Archive Book Images</a></p></div>
<p>To help visualize the numbers, picture a trip from the Earth to the sun. It is 150 million kilometres long on average (that&#8217;s approximately 93 million miles). <strong>If each kilometre represents one spam comment, it would take 75 trips to the sun to account for all the spam comments Akismet saw this month</strong>. On the other hand, if each legitimate comment were one kilometre, it would make up only one trip and a third.</p>
<p>The busiest day for spam for Akismet this month was the 29th, with over 482 million spam comments caught. The slowest day was the 12th (coming in at only 273 million).</p>
<p>Akismet missed only about 1 in every 11,475 spam comments this month. Your own blog&#8217;s spam comments may have followed similar rises and falls, and seen some missed spam comments. Please mark those missed comments as spam so that Akismet can learn from your feedback. If you notice a large number of spam comments coming through uncaught by Akismet, please <a href="http://akismet.com/contact/">contact us</a> and we&#8217;ll be glad to help.</p>
<p><em>This post is part of a monthly series summarizing some stats and figures from the Akismet universe. Feel free to browse <a href="http://blog.akismet.com/category/monthly-roundup/">all of the posts in the series</a>.</em></p><br />  <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/akismet.wordpress.com/1732/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/akismet.wordpress.com/1732/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=blog.akismet.com&blog=116920&post=1732&subd=akismet&ref=&feed=1" width="1" height="1" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Nov 2014 16:37:56 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Valerie";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"WPTavern: WordPress for Android 3.3 Released, Features Improvements to the Reader";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32726";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"http://wptavern.com/wordpress-for-android-3-3-released-features-improvements-to-the-reader";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2373:"<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/android-app.png" rel="prettyphoto[32726]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/android-app.png?resize=296%2C500" alt="android-app" class="alignright size-large wp-image-32829" /></a>WordPress for Android 3.3 was <a href="https://apps.wordpress.org/2014/10/30/wordpress-android-app-version-3-3/" target="_blank">released</a> last week. A majority of the improvements found in this release center around enhancing <a href="http://en.support.wordpress.com/reader/" target="_blank">WordPress.com&#8217;s built-in Reader</a>.</p>
<p>Android users will find a few changes in the app but nothing that would effect the normal publishing workflow:</p>
<ul>
<li>The post and the comment views are now split up in the Reader.</li>
<li>Live support is back in the app &#8211; contact Automattic support by going to Settings-> Help and support-> Contact</li>
</ul>
<p>Version 3.3 was essentially a janitorial release with fixes for bugs that users found to be annoying. The following items have been patched up:</p>
<ul>
<li>Videos are now correctly resized to the screen width in the Reader</li>
<li>Reader is no longer crashing with very long posts</li>
<li>Web views on the notification screen are now working when all blogs are hidden</li>
<li>Users now receive a notification that blank posts cannot be published</li>
</ul>
<p>If you don&#8217;t utilize WordPress.com features when publishing with the app, then you&#8217;re not likely to be impacted by the improvements in 3.3. The <a href="https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-Android/milestones/3.4" target="_blank">3.4 milestone</a>, however, hints at the possibility of improvements to the media/themes grid layout and some important fixes for uploads. The planned enhancements will improve the experience of publishing media through the app.</p>
<p>The WP for Android app team is always looking for more beta testers. If you want to join the beta testing program, you&#8217;ll get access to new features and improvements in progress, and you will have an opportunity to offer feedback on the app&#8217;s development. Sign up on the app&#8217;s dedicated <a href="https://plus.google.com/communities/108813167297661427043" title="WordPress for Android Google+ community" target="_blank">Google+ community page</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Nov 2014 05:21:36 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:27:"Matt: Nobel Prize &amp; TSA";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44303";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:37:"http://ma.tt/2014/11/nobel-prize-tsa/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:259:"<p><a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/10/10/nobel-prize-airport-security/">What It’s Like to Carry Your Nobel Prize through Airport Security</a>. <cite>Hat tip: <a href="http://www.devthought.com/">Guillermo Rauch</a>.</cite></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Nov 2014 04:10:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"Matt: First Time Movember";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44339";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"http://ma.tt/2014/11/movember/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1313:"<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2014/11/2014-movember.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-44340 size-medium" src="http://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2014/11/2014-movember.jpg?resize=604%2C604" alt="2014-movember" /></a> <a href="http://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> is participating in <a href="http://us.movember.com/">Movember</a> for the first time this year, and so to join I shaved for the first time in the better part of a decade. (Before and after pictured above.) For those not familiar with it, you shave clean on November first and grow and groom a mostache (no beard, goatee, etc) through the course of the month, and when people comment on how ridiculous you look you encourage them to donate to Movember which is a non-profit which has raise over $500 million and funded over 800 programs in 21 countries. (Wow!)</p>
<p>I doubt I&#8217;ll be able to match the &#8216;stache of some of my more hirsute colleagues, but it&#8217;s for <a href="http://us.movember.com/mens-health">a good cause</a> and seems like good fun as well. If you&#8217;d consider dropping a few dollars in the hat to support men&#8217;s health, <a href="http://moteam.co/automattic">here&#8217;s the link to the Automattic team page where you can donate to support the entire team</a>, which is currently ranked #163.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 02 Nov 2014 00:08:38 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"Matt: Milky Chance Wrecking Ball";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44313";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/milky-chance-wrecking-ball/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:42:"<p><span class="embed-youtube"></span></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 01 Nov 2014 05:47:46 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"WPTavern: John Saddington Releases Desk, a Premium Publishing Application For The Mac";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32775";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"http://wptavern.com/john-saddington-releases-desk-a-premium-publishing-application-for-the-mac";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5271:"<p><a href="http://desk.pm/">Desk</a> is a new $29 desktop publishing application for Mac OS X, developed by John Saddington, aimed at simplifying the publishing experience. Similar to WordPress’ distraction free writing mode, the interface disappears while in full screen mode. When you move the mouse cursor, interface elements appear on the right and lower part of the screen.</p>
<img src="http://i2.wp.com/keg.wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/DeskAtFullScreen1.png?resize=1025%2C641" alt="" />The Desk Full Screen Interface
<p>At the bottom of the interface, information such as the time the last draft was saved, character count, word count, and estimated time to read is displayed. Blog posts can either be saved locally as documents or you can connect to an existing site.</p>
<h2>Connecting a Site</h2>
<p>Connecting a site to Desk is easy. When you launch Desk, click on the Share button on the right, then click the plus icon. Select which platform you use for your site. In this case, I chose WordPress.</p>
<p><img class=" alignnone                        center" src="http://i1.wp.com/keg.wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/AddingaNewBlog.png?resize=310%2C238" alt="" /></p>
<p>The app uses XML-RPC to communicate with WordPress. If you’re using a security plugin, make sure to double-check that XML-RPC is not disabled or else Desk won’t be able to communicate with the site. Once connected, you’ll be able to create new drafts, publish posts, and access content already published from within Desk.</p>
<h2>Writing Content in Desk</h2>
<p>When creating a new post, Desk has similar options to add post meta information as WordPress except they&#8217;re not in separate meta boxes. You can add multiple categories or create a new one. You can also add tags, a custom URL, and a featured image.</p>
<p><img class=" alignnone                         " src="http://i2.wp.com/keg.wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PostMetaStuff.png?resize=319%2C536" alt="" /></p>
<p>Writing content is fairly straightforward. You can either style text using keyboard shortcuts or use a toolbar that appears when text is highlighted. Using the toolbar, you can bold, italicize, and underline text. You can also create blockquotes, links, bulleted lists, and edit the heading size.</p>
<p><img class=" alignnone                       " src="http://i1.wp.com/keg.wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/DeskToolbar.png?resize=328%2C135" alt="" /></p>
<p>You can either write content using Markdown or the built-in WYSIWYG editor. Both are used simultaneously if you’re comfortable using a mixture of the two. Although I’m used to viewing a persistent toolbar, I don’t find highlighting text first to be an inconvenience. Adding media files such as images is a bit clunky.</p>
<p>To add images to a post, you need to drag and drop them into the editor. While this task may be simple to some, I find it cumbersome. I’d like to see the ability to add an image with a button as well as drag and drop. There are a few caveats to adding images using Desk. You can&#8217;t link an image to the media file or choose which size to display in WordPress. Another thing to keep in mind is that WordPress does not generate thumbnails for images added via Desk. This is a potential deal breaker for a lot of people.</p>
<h2>What a Post Written in Desk Looks Like</h2>
<p>Here is a screenshot of what this post looks like written in Desk in the Text view of the WordPress post editor. Below that is a screenshot of what the post looks like inside of Desk.</p>
<a href="http://i0.wp.com/keg.wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WhatTheCodeOfaDeskWrittenPostLooksLikeinWP.png" rel="prettyphoto[32775]"><img class="size-full wp-image-30109" src="http://i0.wp.com/keg.wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WhatTheCodeOfaDeskWrittenPostLooksLikeinWP.png?resize=570%2C200" alt="The Code View of a Post Written in Desk" /></a>The Code View of a Post Written in Desk
<img src="http://i1.wp.com/keg.wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WhatThePostLooksLikeInDesk.png?resize=836%2C286" alt="" />The Post Content Inside of Desk
<p>I’m not sure why so much extra code is being added to the post. This is an area where Desk and other publishing software have problems. If I write content in an editor outside of WordPress, I don&#8217;t expect to correct spaces, missing paragraphs, extra code, etc. Even if it provides a great looking interface to write content, it’s not worth it if I need to spend a lot of time fixing things. If I need to do that, I might as well stick with writing content in WordPress.</p>
<h2>Plenty of Room For Improvement</h2>
<p>At one point when writing my review, the images I added to the post disappeared. It’s as if their relationship to WordPress was removed. By removing and adding the images in the post, I re-established the relationship.</p>
<p>Desk has a minimal interface, works fine out-of-the-box, but the code generated when creating content is a deal breaker to me. An external publishing application should minimize friction and make the process more enjoyable. Although Desk gets most of the way there, all of the editing I have to do in WordPress after the fact eliminates the joy of using Desk.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 01 Nov 2014 00:26:53 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"WPTavern: Security Vulnerability Discovered and Patched in WP eCommerce";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32794";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"http://wptavern.com/security-vulnerability-discovered-and-patched-in-wp-ecommerce";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2510:"<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WPeCommerceFeaturedImage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32794]"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32796" src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WPeCommerceFeaturedImage.png?resize=650%2C200" alt="WP eCommerce Featured Image" /></a></p>
<p>If you use <a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-e-commerce/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-e-commerce/">WP eCommerce</a>, you&#8217;ll want to update as soon as possible to fix a security vulnerability <a title="http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/10/security-advisory-medium-severity-wp-ecommerce-wordpress-plugin.html" href="http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/10/security-advisory-medium-severity-wp-ecommerce-wordpress-plugin.html">discovered by Sucuri</a>. According to the announcement, the vulnerability could be used by a malicious user to easily get access and modify private information on a site. Any website using WP eCommerce <strong>3.8.14.3</strong> or lower is at risk.</p>
<p>A malicious attacker could use the exploit to export user names, addresses, and other private information. It also allows an attacker to modify orders e.g. non-paid to paid. The vulnerability is similar to the one suffered by MailPoet <a title="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-mailpoet-plugin-security-vulnerability-immediate-update-recommended" href="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-mailpoet-plugin-security-vulnerability-immediate-update-recommended">earlier this year</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The plugin developers assumed that the WordPress’s <strong>admin_init</strong> hook was only called when the administrator was logged in and visited a page inside <strong>/wp-admin/</strong>. However, any call to <strong>/wp-admin/admin-post.php</strong> (or admin-ajax) also executes this hook without requiring the user to be authenticated.</p></blockquote>
<p>Sucuri discovered the exploit during a routine audit of its <a title="http://sucuri.net/website-firewall/" href="http://sucuri.net/website-firewall/">firewall</a> service. After being disclosed to WP eCommerce earlier this week, the development team <a title="https://github.com/wp-e-commerce/WP-e-Commerce/commit/390c2ecc68027fbf21fb5d99a556d88c7bd8c05b" href="https://github.com/wp-e-commerce/WP-e-Commerce/commit/390c2ecc68027fbf21fb5d99a556d88c7bd8c05b">quickly patched</a> the exploit and released an update. Sucuri states details of the vulnerability will not be published until users have had time to update their sites.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 31 Oct 2014 03:07:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"WPTavern: WPWeekly Episode 168 – Recap of WordCamp San Francisco 2014";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:44:"http://wptavern.com?p=32762&preview_id=32762";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"http://wptavern.com/wpweekly-episode-168-recap-of-wordcamp-san-francisco-2014";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2854:"<p>In this episode of WordPress Weekly, <a title="http://marcuscouch.com/" href="http://marcuscouch.com/">Marcus Couch</a> and I dissect Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s <a title="http://wptavern.com/matt-mullenwegs-state-of-the-word-highlights-internationalization-mobile-and-new-tools-for-wordpress-contributors" href="http://wptavern.com/matt-mullenwegs-state-of-the-word-highlights-internationalization-mobile-and-new-tools-for-wordpress-contributors">State of the Word presentation</a> from WordCamp San Francisco. We discuss the global focus of WordPress 4.1, renaming the annual conference to WordCamp US, and the enhancements planned for the plugin and theme directories. The plugin picks of the week round out the show.</p>
<h2>Stories Discussed:</h2>
<p><a title="http://wptavern.com/matt-mullenwegs-state-of-the-word-highlights-internationalization-mobile-and-new-tools-for-wordpress-contributors" href="http://wptavern.com/matt-mullenwegs-state-of-the-word-highlights-internationalization-mobile-and-new-tools-for-wordpress-contributors">Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word Highlights Internationalization, Mobile, and New Tools for WordPress Contributors</a><br />
<a title="http://www.poststat.us/matt-mullenwegs-2014-state-word/" href="http://www.poststat.us/matt-mullenwegs-2014-state-word/">Matt Mullenweg’s 2014 State of the Word</a></p>
<h2>Plugins Picked By Marcus:</h2>
<p><a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-mover/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-mover/">Plugin Mover</a> enables you to move plugins out of sight without having to delete them.</p>
<p><a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/widget-importer-exporter/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/widget-importer-exporter/">Widget Importer and Exporter</a> is useful for moving widgets from one WordPress site to another, backing up widgets, and for theme developers to provide users with sample widgets.</p>
<p><a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/massive-visual-builder-page-layout-builder/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/massive-visual-builder-page-layout-builder/">Massive Visual Page Builder</a> enables users to visually build Pages using a wide selection of shortcodes.</p>
<h2>WPWeekly Meta:</h2>
<p><strong>Next Episode:</strong> Wednesday, November 5th 9:30 P.M. Eastern</p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: </strong><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wordpress-weekly/id694849738" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via RSS: </strong><a href="http://www.wptavern.com/feed/podcast" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Stitcher Radio: </strong><a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/wordpress-weekly-podcast?refid=stpr" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Listen To Episode #168:</strong><br />
</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 31 Oct 2014 03:03:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:107:"WPTavern: AppPresser Debuts Reactor: A WordPress-Powered Mobile App Creator Built with the WP JSON REST API";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32729";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:116:"http://wptavern.com/apppresser-debuts-reactor-a-wordpress-powered-mobile-app-creator-built-with-the-wp-json-rest-api";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5619:"<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/reactor.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32729]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/reactor.jpg?resize=846%2C400" alt="reactor" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32769" /></a></p>
<p>The folks behind <a href="https://apppresser.com" target="_blank">AppPresser</a>, the first mobile app development framework for WordPress, generated some buzz at <a href="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/" target="_blank">WordCamp San Francisco</a> with live demos of their upcoming <a href="https://apppresser.com/reactor-behind-scenes/" target="_blank">Reactor</a> product.</p>
<p>When AppPresser was <a href="http://wptavern.com/apppresser-launches-first-mobile-app-development-framework-for-wordpress" target="_blank">launched</a> in January, it was groundbreaking in terms of demonstrating the power of WordPress as an application platform. However, it was not as user-friendly as the team hoped, with the necessity of installing multiple plugins and sending your app away to get built before you can test it on mobile. Customizing the app through AppPresser often left customers, especially non-developers, confused and in need of support.</p>
<p>After seeing a live demo of Reactor, it seems likely that this new product will someday be the official successor of AppPresser. Reactor provides a hosted app-building experience that is far easier to use.</p>
<h3>Reactor Will Provide a Hosted App Creation Service Using the WP JSON REST API</h3>
<p><a href="http://modemlooper.me/" target="_blank">Ryan Fugate</a>, an AppPresser developer involved with building Reactor, said that the forthcoming WP JSON REST API was instrumental in the decision to build Reactor. &#8220;The API allows you to create much better performance in your apps, as well as offline capabilities.&#8221; Content created in Reactor is cached, stored in your app, and available offline.</p>
<p>Any plugin that creates its own endpoints for the WP API can easily have its data pulled in and integrated with Reactor. In other words, instead of AppPresser having to create complicated add-ons for every plugin out there, the plugins can make themselves available to talk to Reactor via support for the new WP API.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are currently building in support for WooCommerce and will be adding lots more plugins as they add support for the API,&#8221; Fugate told the Tavern.</p>
<p>Since app creation with Reactor is provided as a hosted service, the team can offer a more consistent experience for its customers. &#8220;Building our own customized experience is a much better experience for the user,&#8221; Fugate said. &#8220;It allows us to integrate things like the build process and push notifications, which would not have been possible otherwise.&#8221;</p>
<p>After testing Reactor, the single most useful feature that stands out is the live preview of your app as you are building it, as you can see in the demo video below. Instead of shipping your app off to be built with Phonegap, you can actually have it built automatically and scan a QR code to download it to your phone for testing.</p>
<p><span class="embed-youtube"></span></p>
<h3>Will AppPresser &#8220;Classic&#8221; Be Phased Out in the Future?</h3>
<p>Based on the live demo of Reactor that I saw, its features leave the original AppPresser product in the dust. There are so many distinct advantages to using Reactor that it is likely to render the original obsolete. Reactor includes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Pre-made page templates and features</li>
<li>Design customization</li>
<li>Build and preview your app without touching app files</li>
<li>WordPress and non-WP content</li>
<li>Integrated push notifications</li>
<li>Automatic app building</li>
<li>App stats</li>
<li>Faster performance</li>
<li>Offline capabilities</li>
</ul>
<p>Those who purchased the original AppPresser product will be eager to know if Reactor will soon be replacing it. The AppPresser team is committed to continuing support for the original product and won&#8217;t be retiring it anytime soon, according to Fugate:</p>
<blockquote><p>AppPresser &#8216;classic&#8217; is still a very useful product for certain projects. For example, the BuddyPress integration is very solid, and some people may need to load custom content that isn&#8217;t available through the WP API.  Projects like the Dallas Museum of Art app by Webdev studios is a great example of a project for AppPresser classic.  </p>
<p>Reactor has a lot of advantages though, so we&#8217;d recommend most people give it a try first.  We will still continue to sell and support AppPresser classic for the foreseeable future.</p></blockquote>
<p>AppPresser may opt to grandfather in customers who purchased the original product, but the team hasn&#8217;t yet announced their plans. Access to Reactor will be offered for a monthly fee.</p>
<p>The new service may be more cost-effective for customers who integrate push notifications with their apps, since many currently pay $50/month to a 3rd party service. Reactor integrates its own push notifications, which lowers the overall cost for apps that require them.</p>
<p>The new WordPress-powered app creation service is an excellent example of what is possible for developers to build using the upcoming WP JSON REST API. <a href="https://apppresser.com" target="_blank">AppPresser</a> continues to innovate in the app space with virtually no competition from other companies, but that may change as others discover the power of the new API. The team hopes to have Reactor launched by the end of the year.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Oct 2014 23:23:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"WPTavern: Where Will WordCamp US be Held?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32740";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:51:"http://wptavern.com/where-will-wordcamp-usa-be-held";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2350:"<a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WordCampUSAFeaturedImage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32740]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32754" src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WordCampUSAFeaturedImage.png?resize=640%2C276" alt="WordCamp USA Featured Image" /></a>photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/vgrigoriu/363904283/">vgrigoriu</a> &#8211; <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>
<p>During the <a title="http://wptavern.com/matt-mullenwegs-state-of-the-word-highlights-internationalization-mobile-and-new-tools-for-wordpress-contributors" href="http://wptavern.com/matt-mullenwegs-state-of-the-word-highlights-internationalization-mobile-and-new-tools-for-wordpress-contributors">State of the Word</a> at WordCamp San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg announced that the event will be renamed to WordCamp US and will no longer be held in the Mission Bay conference center. The announcement doesn&#8217;t eliminate San Francisco, California from being the host city but it doesn&#8217;t seem likely as venues to hold more than 1,000 people are hard to come by or too expensive. The idea of WordCamp US is similar to <a href="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-beyond-boundaries-a-recap-of-wordcamp-europe-2014" target="_blank">WordCamp Europe</a> in that it would change host cities every year.</p>
<p>I asked several WCSF attendees where they think the first WordCamp US will be held. The most common answers include the following cities:</p>
<ul>
<li>Houston, TX</li>
<li>Las Vegas, NV</li>
<li>Miami, FL</li>
</ul>
<p>Houston is a likely candidate as it&#8217;s the <a title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg">birth place of Mullenweg</a>, co-creator of the open source WordPress project. With the annual WordPress conference not tied to San Francisco anymore, it gives him an opportunity to host it in his hometown.</p>
<p>Las Vegas has numerous venue locations that can hold upwards of a few thousand people. Food choices are plentiful and the weather is usually pretty nice. Miami is an international destination with easy access from Europe.</p>
<p>Which US city do you think will host the first WordCamp US and which city would you <strong>like to see</strong> host it? Let us know in the comments.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Oct 2014 21:24:52 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"WPTavern: WPWeekly Episode 167 – Preview of WordCamp San Francisco 2014";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:44:"http://wptavern.com?p=32509&preview_id=32509";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"http://wptavern.com/wpweekly-episode-167-preview-of-wordcamp-san-francisco-2014";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3586:"<p>In this episode of WordPress Weekly, <a title="http://marcuscouch.com/" href="http://marcuscouch.com/">Marcus Couch</a> and I dive into the news of the week. We have a lengthy discussion on the subject of niche admin themes for WordPress and what it might be like once the <a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/json-rest-api/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/json-rest-api/">REST API</a> is added to core. After discussing the news, we talked about WordCamp San Francisco and the sessions we&#8217;re most looking forward to attending. We wrapped up the show with the plugin picks of the week.</p>
<h2>Stories Discussed:</h2>
<p><a title="http://wptavern.com/the-first-rate-and-review-a-plugin-day-is-a-success" href="http://wptavern.com/the-first-rate-and-review-a-plugin-day-is-a-success">The First “Rate and Review a Plugin Day” is a Success</a><br />
<a title="http://wptavern.com/jason-schuller-to-re-enter-wordpress-theme-market-with-niche-admin-designs" href="http://wptavern.com/jason-schuller-to-re-enter-wordpress-theme-market-with-niche-admin-designs">Jason Schuller to Re-Enter WordPress Theme Market with Niche Admin Designs</a><br />
<a title="http://wptavern.com/easily-edit-a-post-or-page-using-the-slash-edit-plugin" href="http://wptavern.com/easily-edit-a-post-or-page-using-the-slash-edit-plugin">Easily Edit a Post or Page Using The Slash Edit Plugin</a><br />
<a title="http://wptavern.com/comparing-the-photo-publishing-experience-of-wordpress-for-ios-to-facebook-and-twitter" href="http://wptavern.com/comparing-the-photo-publishing-experience-of-wordpress-for-ios-to-facebook-and-twitter">Comparing The Photo Publishing Experience of WordPress For iOS to Facebook and Twitter</a><br />
<a title="http://wptavern.com/tickets-still-available-to-watch-the-wordcamp-san-francisco-live-stream" href="http://wptavern.com/tickets-still-available-to-watch-the-wordcamp-san-francisco-live-stream">Tickets Still Available to Watch The WordCamp San Francisco Live Stream</a></p>
<h2>Plugins Picked By Marcus:</h2>
<p><a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/circles-gallery/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/circles-gallery/">Circles Gallery</a> is a dynamic new gallery plugin that presents things in a circular view. It has three different ways to present a gallery.</p>
<p><a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/cp-polls/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/cp-polls/">CP Polls</a> is a plugin that enables you to publish a poll into a page/post and optionally display statistics of the results. You can receive email notifications every time a vote is added or opt to receive Excel reports periodically.</p>
<p><a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gravity-forms-entry-expiration/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gravity-forms-entry-expiration/">Gravity Forms Entry Expiration</a> allows you to automatically delete Gravity Forms entries older than a defined time frame.</p>
<h2>WPWeekly Meta:</h2>
<p><strong>Next Episode:</strong> Wednesday, October 29th 9:30 P.M. Eastern</p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: </strong><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wordpress-weekly/id694849738" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via RSS: </strong><a href="http://www.wptavern.com/feed/podcast" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Stitcher Radio: </strong><a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/wordpress-weekly-podcast?refid=stpr" target="_blank">Click here to subscribe</a></p>
<p><strong>Listen To Episode #167:</strong><br />
</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Oct 2014 21:15:10 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"WPTavern: Jetpack 3.2 Released, Introduces New Site Logo Feature for Theme Developers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32332";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"http://wptavern.com/jetpack-3-2-released-introduces-new-site-logo-feature-for-theme-developers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3893:"<p>Jetpack 3.2 was quietly released yesterday with a host of new enhancements for self-hosted WordPress sites. Following up on 3.1&#8217;s total re-branding of the plugin, 3.2 comes with speed improvements and better caching for related posts.</p>
<p>This release introduces the new &#8216;Site Logo&#8217; feature that was <a href="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-moves-to-standardize-theme-support-for-logos" target="_blank">added to WordPress.com themes</a> in late July. The goal is to increase data portability across themes and standardize the way themes present logo upload.</p>
<p>The Site Logo feature has been added to Jetpack&#8217;s theme tools for any theme that opts to support it. It allows themes to optionally display the site’s title and tagline along with the logo and brings a new way for self-hosted WordPress sites to enjoy logo portability.</p>
<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/site-icon.png" rel="prettyphoto[32332]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/site-icon.png?resize=346%2C146" alt="site-icon" class="alignright size-full wp-image-32710" /></a>You&#8217;ll also find a new Site Icon feature in this release, which lets you create an icon for your site that will be displayed as a favicon. If you don&#8217;t already have a favicon in place, this is an easy way to add one.</p>
<p>The previous release introduced the Portfolio Custom Post Type as the first of many planned custom content types. According to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/changelog/" target="_blank">changelog</a>, Jetpack 3.2 adds a new Testimonials content type. In order to turn it on, one might expect to navigate to ‘Settings’ → &#8216;Writing&#8217; → &#8216;Your Custom Content Types&#8217;, which is where the portfolio one is located. However, this feature is based on theme support and must be declared during <code>after_setup_theme</code>:</p>
<pre class="brush: php; title: ; notranslate">add_theme_support( 'jetpack-testimonial' );</pre>
<p>The Testimonials feature was actually added in a previous release, though not highly publicized.</p>
<p>Additional enhancements in Jetpack 3.2 include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Improvements to API endpoints</li>
<li>oEmbed sources (Twitter, SoundCloud, Instagram, DailyMotion, Vine)</li>
<li>Indicators to make it easier to see which modules are active</li>
<li>Improved debug tool</li>
<li>Added &#8220;Remember Me&#8221; functionality to Single Sign On</li>
<li>Improved accessibility</li>
<li>Additional filters added for Widget Visibility</li>
</ul>
<p>The release notes also include a few bug fixes, most notably the removal of the Google+ module. Since <a href="http://wptavern.com/google-authorship-is-officially-dead-wordpress-authorship-plugins-are-now-obsolete" target="_blank">Google Authorship is now officially dead</a>, Jetpack 3.2 sheds the dead weight of the authorship feature originally introduced in its 2.5 release.</p>
<p>The plugin description page on WordPress.org is sporting a new tagline. Previously, it read: <em>&#8220;Supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.&#8221;</em></p>
<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/jetpack-tagline.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32332]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/jetpack-tagline.jpg?resize=792%2C418" alt="jetpack-tagline" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32707" /></a></p>
<p>The new tagline, <strong><em>&#8220;Your WordPress, Streamlined,&#8221;</em></strong> seems to reflect an interesting language change within WordPress.com that identifies <em>sites</em> as simply <em>WordPress</em>.</p>
<p>As of today, the Jetpack team has not yet officially announced the release on their blog, but the 3.2 update is available to users within the WordPress admin.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Oct 2014 18:10:14 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24:"Matt: Tim Cook Comes Out";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44334";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/tim-cook-comes-out/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:591:"<blockquote><p>&#8220;I will personally continue to advocate for equality for all people until my toes point up.&#8221;<br />
&#8212; Tim Cook</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-30/tim-cook-im-proud-to-be-gay">That&#8217;s from Tim Cook&#8217;s &#8220;I&#8217;m Proud to be Gay&#8221; essay in BusinessWeek today</a>. It&#8217;s beautiful, brave, and amazing, and I love that idea of fighting for something until your last breath, it&#8217;s a very Southern expression. Here&#8217;s to Tim&#8217;s toes not pointing up for many, many years to come.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:26:47 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"WordPress.tv Blog: WordCamp San Francisco 2014:  State of the Word Keynote";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"http://blog.wordpress.tv/?p=406";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"http://blog.wordpress.tv/2014/10/29/wordcamp-san-francisco-2014-state-of-the-word-keynote/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2024:"<p>The first WordCamp ever was held in San Francisco nine years ago (2006) as a way for WordPress users and developers to meet, share knowledge, and learn from one another.  Since that time these informal community-run events have grown and spread across the globe, but to this day WordCamp San Francisco is considered the event of the year for WordPress lovers everywhere.</p>
<p>One of the highlights of WordCamp San Francisco is the &#8220;State of the Word&#8221; keynote speech delivered by Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress.  Presented in two videos, here is the keynote, and the following town hall Q&amp;A, from WordCamp San Francisco 2014.</p>
<h2>Matt Mullenweg: The State of the Word 2014</h2>
<div id="v-GmPDhkyi-1" class="video-player">
</div>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.tv/2014/10/26/matt-mullenweg…-the-word-2014/">View on WordPress.tv</a></p>
<h2>Matt Mullenweg: Town Hall at WordCamp San Francisco 2014</h2>
<div id="v-WmCl2kwS-1" class="video-player">
</div>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.tv/2014/10/26/matt-mullenweg-town-hall-at-wordcamp-san-francisco-2014/">View on WordPress.tv</a></p><br />  <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/wptvblog.wordpress.com/406/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/wptvblog.wordpress.com/406/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://pixel.wp.com/b.gif?host=blog.wordpress.tv&blog=5310177&post=406&subd=wptvblog&ref=&feed=1" width="1" height="1" /><div><a href="http://blog.wordpress.tv/2014/10/29/wordcamp-san-francisco-2014-state-of-the-word-keynote/"><img alt="Matt Mullenweg: The State of the Word 2014" src="http://videos.videopress.com/GmPDhkyi/135_3_scruberthumbnail_1.jpg" width="160" height="120" /></a></div><div><a href="http://blog.wordpress.tv/2014/10/29/wordcamp-san-francisco-2014-state-of-the-word-keynote/"><img alt="Matt Mullenweg: Town Hall at WordCamp San Francisco 2014" src="http://videos.videopress.com/WmCl2kwS/136_scruberthumbnail_1.jpg" width="160" height="120" /></a></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:32:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Jerry Bates";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22:"Matt: No More Platinum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44296";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/no-more-platinum/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:177:"<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2014/10/16/not-one-artists-album-has-gone-platinum-in-2014/">Not One Artist&#8217;s Album Has Gone Platinum In 2014</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 29 Oct 2014 01:50:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"Matt: State of the Word 2014";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44325";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/sotw-2014/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4248:"<p>Yesterday I delivered the State of the Word address to the WordPress community, and the video is <a href="http://wordpress.tv/2014/10/26/matt-mullenweg-the-state-of-the-word-2014/">already up on WordPress.tv</a>.</p>
<div id="v-GmPDhkyi-1" class="video-player"></div>
<p>Here are the slides if you&#8217;d like to view them on their own:</p>
<p> 
<div> <strong> <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/photomatt/state-of-the-word-2014" title="State of the Word 2014" target="_blank">State of the Word 2014</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/photomatt" target="_blank">photomatt</a></strong> </div>
<p>If you just want the bullet points, here are the big things I discussed and announced:</p>
<ul>
<li>There will be 81 <a href="http://wordcamp.org/">WordCamps</a> in 2014.</li>
<li>This was the <a href="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/">9th and final WordCamp San Francisco</a> in its current form. We&#8217;ve maxed out the venue for years, so next year we&#8217;ll do a WordCamp US at a location and date to be determined.</li>
<li>Milestone: 2014 was the first year non-English downloads surpassed English downloads of WordPress.</li>
<li>33k took our survey: 7,539 (25%) of survey participants make their living from WordPress. Over 90% of people build more than one site, and spend less than 200 hours building one.</li>
<li>We&#8217;ve done five major and seven minor releases since the last WCSF, and have had 785 contributors across them.</li>
<li><a href="http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/all/y">WordPress market share</a> has risen from 19% in 2013 to 23% now.</li>
<li>We now have 34k plugins and 2.7k themes, and have enjoyed record activity on both &#8212; including plugins passing 1,000,000 commits.</li>
<li><a href="https://apps.wordpress.org/">16 releases of our mobile apps</a>, Android and iOS.</li>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/">Code Reference launched</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://wordpress.meetup.com/">105 active meetup groups in 21 countries</a>, with over 100 meetup and WordCamp organizers present at the event.</li>
<li>Internationalization will be a big focus of the coming year, including fully-localized plugin and theme directories on language sites and embedded on dashboard in version 4.1, which is coming out December 10th.</li>
<li>Better stats coming for plugin and theme authors.</li>
<li>Version fragmentation is a big challenge for WordPress, only a quarter of users are currently on the latest release.</li>
<li> This is also a problem for PHP &#8212; we&#8217;ll be working with hosts to help with version fragmentation, as well as to get as many WordPress sites as possible running PHP 5.5 or better.</li>
<li>Showed off 2015 theme.</li>
<li>We will be testing a workflow for accepting pull requests on <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress">our official WordPress Github repository</a> before the end of the year.</li>
<li>For the first time in 11 years we&#8217;re switching away from IRC as our primary communication method. We&#8217;ll be moving to <a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a>, which has helped us set up so that every member of WordPress.org can use it. (During the keynote address the number of people on Slack surpassed our IRC channels, and is currently over 800 people.) <a href="http://chat.wordpress.org/">Sign up at chat.wordpress.org</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://ma.tt/2014/09/five-for-the-future/">Five for the Future</a>, with Gravity Forms and WPMU Dev committing to donate, and Automattic now at 14 full-time contributors to core and community.</li>
<li>We need to work hard to harmonize the <a href="http://wp-api.org/">REST API plugin</a> and the <a href="http://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/">WordPress.com REST API</a>.</li>
<li><strong>The mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing</strong>, which means access for everyone regardless of language, geography, gender, wealth, ability, religion, creed, or anything else people might be born with. To do that we need our community to be inclusive and welcoming. There is a sublime beauty in our differences, and they&#8217;re as important as the principles that bring us together, like the GPL.</li>
</ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 28 Oct 2014 01:28:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:128:"WPTavern: Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word Highlights Internationalization, Mobile, and New Tools for WordPress Contributors";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32611";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:133:"http://wptavern.com/matt-mullenwegs-state-of-the-word-highlights-internationalization-mobile-and-new-tools-for-wordpress-contributors";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9105:"<p>Today Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual State of the Word address at <a href="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/" target="_blank">WordCamp San Francisco</a>, with roughly 1,000 WordPress enthusiasts and contributors in attendance and hundreds more watching via livestream.</p>
<p>Before jumping into the results of the survey, Mullenweg announced that this would be the last event held at Mission Bay conference center.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550"><p>Touch the walls as you walk out, as this is the last time we'll have <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordCampSF?src=hash">#WordCampSF</a> here! ~ <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt">@photomatt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf14?src=hash">#wcsf14</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/endofanera?src=hash">#endofanera</a></p>
<p>&mdash; WordCamp SF (@WordCampSF) <a href="https://twitter.com/WordCampSF/status/526454529584549889">October 26, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
<h3>WordCamp USA</h3>
<p>WordCamp San Francisco will become WordCamp USA next year. The name of the conference, location, date, and details are yet to be determined. The event has outgrown the Mission Bay venue and the organization team wants to be make room for more people and presentations.</p>
<p>With the undeniable success of <a href="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-beyond-boundaries-a-recap-of-wordcamp-europe-2014" target="_blank">WordCamp Europe</a> two years in a row, pan-continental WordCamps may become more common in connecting people in various regions of the world. In fact, Mullenweg envisions that a number of &#8220;anchor WordCamps&#8221; will surface in the near future.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550"><p>“There could be WordCamp Asia and WordCamp Africa, with their own set of contributors and developers.”  <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt">@photomatt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf?src=hash">#wcsf</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf14?src=hash">#wcsf14</a></p>
<p>&mdash; David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) <a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia/status/526438861530873856">October 26, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
<h3>Internationalization Improvements to Connect the Global WordPress Community</h3>
<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/internationalization.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32611]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/internationalization.jpg?resize=1025%2C476" alt="internationalization" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32625" /></a></p>
<p>This year 33,000 people responded to the <a href="http://wptavern.com/take-the-2014-wordpress-user-and-developer-survey" target="_blank">WordPress user and developer survey</a>. Mullenweg stated that 2014 is likely to be remembered as a turning point for the project, noting that this was the first year that non-English downloads surpassed English downloads.</p>
<p>Mullenweg encouraged attendees to see locale as a wider concept that includes language, timezone, and date formats. WordPress may soon be able to provide per-user internationalization features. For example, if someone leaves a comment in Japanese, an English-speaking post author would receive the notification in English.</p>
<p>Language packs are coming to more plugins and themes by early 2015. Mullenweg announced that fully localized plugin and theme directories will be available in the dashboard starting with WordPress 4.1. He believes that internationalization improvements will be one of the most impactful things for WordPress&#8217; growth over the next decade.</p>
<p><strong>&#8220;If WordPress is going to be truly global, truly inclusive, it has to be fully available for other languages,&#8221;</strong> he said. The upcoming improvements give WordPress the potential to be a truly global experience.</p>
<h3>The Importance of Responsive Mobile</h3>
<p>As he has in many recent interviews, Mullenweg highlighted the continuing importance of responsive mobile. &#8220;There are now more phones on the planet than human beings. We need to cater to them or they&#8217;re just going to replace us,&#8221; he joked.</p>
<p>The future of the platform depends on having a strong mobile presence, but Mullenweg has a larger vision for how WordPress can lead the way for the next generation of the mobile web.</p>
<p><strong>&#8220;Online communication is one of the great equalizers of our time,&#8221;</strong> he said. This goes hand-in-hand with the WordPress mission to democratize publishing. As mobile devices now have the capacity to do more things, Mullenweg is inspired by the idea that people can always be connected. He believes that WordPress as an application platform is poised to the lead the way.</p>
<p>The 2014 survey results revealed that WordPress usage as a blog and as a CMS is declining every year. However, its usage as an app framework is steadily growing.</p>
<p>Mullenweg highlighted the <a href="http://wp-api.org/" target="_blank">WP REST API</a> as critical to WordPress&#8217; ability to rapidly iterate in the future. The new API will pave the way for &#8220;completely bespoke posting interfaces,&#8221; he said. WordPress developers have often asked him when the platform will allow for theming the admin. Mullenweg hopes that the new API will make it possible for &#8220;1,000 different WordPress admins to bloom.&#8221;</p>
<h3>Exciting New Tools for WordPress Contributors: GitHub and Slack</h3>
<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/contributors.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32611]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/contributors.jpg?resize=1025%2C495" alt="contributors" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32645" /></a></p>
<p>WordPress runs on contributions and communication. There were 785 people who contributed on five major releases since the last WordCamp San Francisco. The software recently crossed the one million commits mark. During the State of the Word, Mullenweg highlighted recent release leads and new committers, making a point to personally thank those who create the software that now runs 23% of the web.</p>
<h4>GitHub</h4>
<p>He also delivered several announcements to the delight of contributors in attendance. After asking the audience who has used Git and GitHub, he exclaimed, &#8220;Whoah, that&#8217;s all the hands!&#8221; He followed that up with the announcement that core contributors will soon be able to submit pull requests on GitHub.</p>
<h4>Slack</h4>
<p>For the first time in 11 years, the project will experiment with not using IRC as its primary communication tool. Mullenweg announced that the community will be trying out Slack for real-time communication for contributor teams. The tool is mobile friendly and has a number of strong advantages over IRC for asynchronous communication. If a ticket is mentioned in Slack, it will be linked with trac. The #wordpress support IRC channel will still be used. Participation on Slack is now available to every single WordPress.org contributor, replacing IRC and ad hoc Skype chats. You can visit <a href="http://chat.wordpress.org" target="_blank">chat.wordpress.org</a> to initiate your invite.</p>
<p>The #wordpress support IRC channel will continue on. Slack will be used for contributing to the WordPress project, be it code, design, documentation, etc.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550"><p>During State of the Word, already more people in <a href="https://twitter.com/SlackHQ">@SlackHQ</a> then in WordPress Dev IRC. <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt">@photomatt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf?src=hash">#wcsf</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf14?src=hash">#wcsf14</a></p>
<p>&mdash; David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) <a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia/status/526448569415262208">October 26, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>Results of the 2014 survey showed that a full quarter of those surveyed make their living using WordPress, representing more than a billion dollars of economic activity per year. Mullenweg referenced his <a href="http://ma.tt/2014/09/five-for-the-future/" target="_blank">Five for the Future</a> post encouraging companies to support the project with 5% of their time. Very few open source software projects thrive as long as the 11 years that WordPress already has, Mullenweg said. He featured three companies that have publicly committed 5% to WordPress, including Gravity Forms, WPMUDEV, and Automattic.</p>
<p><strong>&#8220;This is what is going to take us from 23% to 30% or 40%,&#8221;</strong> he said. With hundreds and thousands of freelancers and companies all over the world giving back to WordPress, the project will have the momentum to continue its unprecedented growth. WordPress has now outgrown the venue of its flagship WordCamp. It has also outgrown its old communication tools. WordPress is about to explode on a global scale. Years from now we&#8217;ll look back on 2014 as a year where many key improvements positioned WordPress to further dominate the web.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 26 Oct 2014 23:41:29 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Post Status: Matt Mullenweg’s 2014 State of the Word";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"http://www.poststat.us/?p=7213";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"http://www.poststat.us/matt-mullenwegs-2014-state-word/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11832:"<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7215" src="http://www.poststat.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mullenweg-752x564.jpg" alt="mullenweg" width="627" height="470" /></p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Oh, my name is Matt Mullenweg by the way. Nice to meet you.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>After the WordPress co-founder welcomed the largest WordCamp San Francisco audience ever, he introduced himself and began this year&#8217;s State of the Word &#8212; the annual talk where he provides insight of the last year of WordPress and inspiration for the future.</p>
<p><em>edit</em>: The video is now available:</p>
<div class="wp-video"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('video');</script><![endif]-->
<a href="http://videos.videopress.com/GmPDhkyi/135_3_dvd.mp4">http://videos.videopress.com/GmPDhkyi/135_3_dvd.mp4</a></div>
<p><a href="http://wordpress.tv/2014/10/26/matt-mullenweg-the-state-of-the-word-2014/">Or watch on WordPress.tv</a></p>
<h3>The last WCSF as we know it</h3>
<p>WordCamp San Francisco has been here in Mission Bay for 7 years, and it&#8217;s the last year here. Next year, things are going to change. There will be a WordCamp US (Matt notes it&#8217;s a working title) that will be modeled similarly to WordCamp Europe. The name, location and date are yet to be determined.</p>
<h3>The annual WordPress survey</h3>
<p>This year there were over 33,000 responses to the annual WordPress survey.</p>
<p>Only 23% of the survey respondents were from the United States &#8212; a 6% increase of international respondents. And for the first time ever, non-English downloads surpassed English downloads. This change is much due to the new internationalization tools in WordPress core itself.</p>
<p>A quarter of the respondents now make their living fully off of WordPress &#8212; 7,539 people from the survey pool. Matt estimates those people alone make up for more than a billion dollars of economic impact.</p>
<p>Of those people surveyed, they have between half a million and a million currently active websites they own or have developed. And 91% of those sites took less than 200 hours to make.</p>
<h3>5 releases since the last WCSF</h3>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7218" src="http://www.poststat.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/contributors-752x560.jpg" alt="contributors" width="627" height="466" /></p>
<p>Since last summer and the last WCSF, we&#8217;ve had five major releases of WordPress. Matt spent some time going over some of the features we&#8217;ve gained.</p>
<p>From WordPress 3.6 to WordPress 4.0, WordPress has evolved an enormous amount in a short amount of time. It&#8217;s better on mobile; has a better user experience; is more performant; is easier to use for both developers and end users; and is the best publishing tool in the world.</p>
<p>There have been seven release leads in that time:</p>
<ul>
<li>Jon Cave</li>
<li>Andrew Nacin</li>
<li>Helen Hou-Sandi</li>
<li>Mark Jaquith</li>
<li>Dion Hulse</li>
<li>Mike Schroder</li>
<li>Aaron Campbell</li>
</ul>
<p>Additionally, Matt highlighted another 8 significant contributors and five new committers to the WordPress project.</p>
<p>In these five releases, there have been 785 contributors to the project. And Matt also highlights John Blackbourn &#8212; the WordPress 4.1 release lead, which will soon enter beta.</p>
<h3>Two Drupal growth</h3>
<p>Since last summer, WordPress has grown &#8220;two Drupal marketshares.&#8221;</p>
<p>There have been 684 theme additions to the repository this year &#8212; a 36% increase year over year. There are now 2,781 themes in the repo.</p>
<h3>iOS and Android</h3>
<p>There have been two updates for Android, five for iOS, and we abandoned older platforms to focus on a better user experience. &#8220;Sorry, both of the Windows phone users,&#8221; he joked.</p>
<p>Matt notes that there are now more mobile phones than humans on earth, and that this will continue to be a huge priority.</p>
<h3>Developer.WordPress.org</h3>
<p>Noted in the last WCSF State of the Word, <a href="http://developer.wordpress.org">developer.wordpress.org</a> is now live. A little later that hoped, he noted, but it&#8217;s a huge achievement and improvement for WordPress documentation.</p>
<h3>Community</h3>
<p>There are over 100 meetup and WordCamp organizers here at WordCamp San Francisco. Matt asked them all to stand, with a personal thanks to their commitment to a difficult, but rewarding task.</p>
<h3>Internationalization</h3>
<p>We have a long way to go with Internationalization, but Matt highlights some of the progress and promise for the future, including the advancement of language packs that plugin and theme developers will be able to take advantage of.</p>
<p>Soon &#8212; with the release of WordPress 4.1 &#8212; Matt announced that the WordPress plugin and theme directories will be fully localized, making it more accessible and fully translated for non-English speakers.</p>
<p>&#8220;The discovery process [of themes and plugins] is prohibitive&#8221; unless we make it a priority to offer the same discovery features that are in English to other languages.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;We have the potential &#8212; thanks to the web &#8212; for WordPress to be a truly global experience.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<h3>Better WordPress.org stats</h3>
<p>Matt is promising a better offering of statistics for WordPress theme and plugin providers &#8212; a task that&#8217;s being worked on right now by the .org team.</p>
<p>These are numbers people have long wanted and are very difficult to get. This is a very welcome change.</p>
<h3>Adoption of new releases</h3>
<p>Matt says only 25% of users are on the latest install, WordPress 4.0. While he notes that it&#8217;s far better than it was in the past, we still have a lot of improvement we can make.</p>
<p>And he goes into the importance of removing versions from the conversation in software. Users should not know or care the version of their software. They should only know that it works.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our vision is that we&#8217;re like Chrome. &#8230; And the hosts have helped pioneer this.&#8221; But WordPress itself will eventually move to such a model; this is a thing that is controversial, but I believe it is an essential and inevitable evolution.</p>
<p>Matt asked how many people had been hacked &#8212; and even in a room full of professionals &#8212; it was a lot of people. This is why updates are important, as updated WordPress installs are much safer.</p>
<h3>Relationship with PHP</h3>
<p>Matt spent some time talking about WordPress support for more modern versions of PHP.</p>
<p>WordPress is notorious for being a poor supporter of modern PHP. But that&#8217;s ready to change.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to start working with hosts to get everyone on PHP 5.5 or above.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<h3>The Twenty Fifteen theme</h3>
<p>Matt is excited about Twenty Fifteen, this coming year&#8217;s default theme. He notes this is our fifth year with a new default theme, and it&#8217;s the same number of years that Kubrick was the only default theme. A massive success.</p>
<h3>WordPress and Github</h3>
<p>Matt Mullenweg says that starting this year, you can submit a pull request to WordPress on Github, &#8220;and that will not go into a black hole.&#8221;</p>
<p>He asked how many people are using Github, and nearly everyone raised their hand. This removes a barrier to contributing to WordPress, and is a huge improvement.</p>
<p>He also says that all development of the WordPress mobile apps is now on Github. It&#8217;s also worth noting that much of Automattic&#8217;s internal projects, like Jetpack, are run on Github.</p>
<h3>Community communication with Slack</h3>
<p>For the first time in 11 years, WordPress is leaving IRC for primary organization communication. We&#8217;re going to try a tool called <a href="http://slack.com">Slack</a>, built by a company in San Francisco started by the former founder of Flickr. Slack has taken over communication in remote teams, from my experience, and will be excellent.</p>
<p>Slack will also help us make use of integrations and notifications. Right after the talk, <a href="http://chat.wordpress.org">chat.wordpress.org</a> will lead any WordPress.org user to a method for using Slack for communication.</p>
<p>This is a huge partnership, and as someone that uses Slack daily, I&#8217;m incredibly excited. I&#8217;m sure there could be pushback for using a paid tool for this, but it&#8217;s certainly and interesting experiment and I&#8217;m excited to see what happens.</p>
<p>It appears clear to me that contributing to WordPress will now be easier than ever.</p>
<h3>Five for the future</h3>
<p>Matt talked about his controversial blog post about the concept of <a href="http://ma.tt/2014/09/five-for-the-future/">Five for the future</a>, something <a title="Contribution as culture" href="http://www.poststat.us/contribution-culture/">I also opined about</a>.</p>
<p>Matt highlighted three companies: Gravity Forms, WPMUDev, and Automattic are all now contributing 5%. Of course he notes others are doing it as well, but wanted to highlight those that have committed to doing it publicly.</p>
<p>Matt discussed a number of ways people can contribute, and that folks can attend sessions to learn how to contribute both here at WCSF and at most other WordCamp events.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;A contributor, by the way, is a title that no one can give you except yourself.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>He called it an altruistic mentality of contribution.</p>
<h3>The JSON REST API</h3>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s excited about the REST API?&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Nearly everyone responded with enthusiasm. Matt talks about how WordPress.com has had a similar API for years now, and what they&#8217;ve learned, and how much potential there will be for the core version, and the importance for marrying the .com API and the .org API as they each approach 2.0.</p>
<p>Matt wants us to re-think &#8220;the WordPress engine&#8221; as a kernel that can a hub for building all sorts of things that are more capable to be fit into a proper architecture for the case at hand versus &#8220;shoehorning&#8221; existing WordPress features to areas that aren&#8217;t really meant for it.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Maybe what we need isn&#8217;t a way for theming the WP admin; maybe what we need is a way for 1,000 WP admins to be built.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>And for those admins to be able to fork each other, learn from one another, and create better and catered publishing experiences catered to specific use cases.</p>
<p>We can expect the core WordPress JSON API in 2015.</p>
<h3>The continuing importance of WordPress and mobile.</h3>
<p>Matt discussed how important mobile is to the future of the web, and therefore WordPress. &#8220;They are winning,&#8221; he says about the phones, and says how phones are more available and evolving every year. &#8220;They&#8217;re getting bigger and bigger,&#8221; and the interfaces and methods for interacting with our phones are evolving as well.</p>
<p>Matt believes that WordPress can play a central role in the further evolution of mobile applications and the mobile web. As the power of mobile devices gets better, Matt believes that the web will become a bigger part of the mobile experience than it is now &#8212; when the conversation seems to be completely centered around apps.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;This is one of the ways that we can be truly global.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<h3>Wrapping up</h3>
<p>To democratize publishing, is the mission of WordPress.</p>
<p>WordPress is a community, Matt states, and accessibility from a language, device, and any other point of view is critical to the mission of WordPress.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 26 Oct 2014 18:49:03 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Brian Krogsgard";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"Matt: Anti-spam and E2E crypto";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44305";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:46:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/anti-spam-and-e2e-crypto/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:232:"<p><a href="https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2014/000780.html">A brief history of spam and email crypto by someone who used to work on Gmail</a>. <cite>Hat tip: <a href="http://z9.io/">Donncha O Caoimh</a>.</cite></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 25 Oct 2014 17:24:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:29:"Matt: WordCamp SF Live Stream";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44316";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/wordcamp-sf-live-stream/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:681:"<p>WordCamp San Francisco, the original, starts tomorrow and the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=wcsf&src=typd">tweets are already starting to stream in</a>. On Sunday at 11AM I will deliver my <a href="http://wordpress.tv/speakers/matt-mullenweg/?s=state">State of the Word address</a>, our annual look at where we&#8217;ve been and the road ahead, and even if you can&#8217;t make it <a href="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/live-stream/">you can livestream the SoTW and the entire weekend for just $10 from the comfort of your own home</a>. 16+ hours of WP entertainment for the price of one movie ticket! (Or might be a sleep aid, depends on your perspective.)</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 24 Oct 2014 18:02:27 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:37:"Alex King: No WordCamp SF 2014 For Me";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://alexking.org/?p=21026";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"http://alexking.org/blog/2014/10/24/no-wordcamp-2014-for-me";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:216:"<p>Unfortunately I&#8217;m not going to be able to attend WordCamp SF 2014. My apologies to those who I was planning to meet up with. I&#8217;ll miss seeing you folks there &#8211; but have fun and do great work!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 24 Oct 2014 16:21:45 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Alex";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"WPTavern: MediaPress Now in Beta: A New Media Gallery Plugin for BuddyPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32554";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"http://wptavern.com/mediapress-now-in-beta-a-new-media-gallery-plugin-for-buddypress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6508:"<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mediapress-feature.png" rel="prettyphoto[32554]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mediapress-feature.png?resize=991%2C494" alt="mediapress-feature" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32589" /></a></p>
<p>For a long time, BuddyPress has been sorely in need of better support for media, as images, video, and audio play a major part in connecting people on social networks. BuddyPress core has adopted the <a href="http://wptavern.com/buddypress-to-adopt-features-as-plugins-model-to-develop-new-media-component" target="_blank">features-as-plugin development</a> model to help facilitate the development of a new media component called BP Attachments. This new Attachments API, once finished, would allow BuddyPress to store media as attachments, offering developers a standard way of extending the plugin to build media-related functionality.</p>
<p>With no way of knowing when or if BuddyPress will add a core media component, developers have struggled over the years to tackle media support with independent solutions. <a href="http://buddydev.com/" target="_blank">Brajesh Singh</a>, a prolific BuddyPress plugin developer, created the popular BP Gallery four years ago to address this need, but the plugin is now outdated.</p>
<p>Last week Singh introduced <a href="http://buddydev.com/buddypress/presenting-mediapress-media-plugin-will-ever-need-buddypress/" target="_blank">MediaPress</a>, his latest attempt at creating gallery/album capabilities for BuddyPress. The plugin is now in beta and boasts an impressive list of features, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>User media/gallery/album support</li>
<li>Group media/gallery/album support</li>
<li>Built-in photo, audio, and video support</li>
<li>Supports privacy</li>
<li>Drag-and-drop uploader</li>
<li>Upload from Activity</li>
<li>Automatic wall galleries creation</li>
<li>Wall gallery support for Groups/Users</li>
<li>Grid layout for media</li>
<li>Playlist view support for audio/Video Galleries</li>
<li>Widgets and shortcodes to list galleries, media, playlist, audio, etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>MediaPress adds upload buttons for images, audio, and video to the activity update box. Users can also upload from the gallery menu item in their profiles.</p>
<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/media-upload.png" rel="prettyphoto[32554]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/media-upload.png?resize=1025%2C428" alt="media-upload" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32569" /></a></p>
<p>MediaPress&#8217; gallery support works very similar to Facebook. Images uploaded via the activity stream will be placed in a wall photo gallery where users can view, edit, or delete them.</p>
<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/user-galleries.png" rel="prettyphoto[32554]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/user-galleries.png?resize=700%2C527" alt="user-galleries" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32571" /></a></p>
<p>MediaPress comes with an extensive array of admin options for controlling its features. It&#8217;s also tightly integrated with WordPress and BuddyPress, which is why audio playlists in the activity stream look similar to audio uploaded to posts.</p>
<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/audio-play-list-activity.png" rel="prettyphoto[32554]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/audio-play-list-activity.png?resize=1025%2C318" alt="audio-play-list-activity" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32573" /></a></p>
<p>Singh built MediaPress to be easy to customize and easy for other components to extend. Here are a few examples of what developers can do with the plugin:</p>
<ul>
<li>Use a different storage manager (supports local uploads by default but you can write one for the cloud- check core/storage/storage-manager.php for details).</li>
<li>Add support for a new Media Type. (Check core/common/api.php, core/common/init.php for details.)</li>
<li>Write a custom media loop. (Check MPP_Media_Query in core/common/query-media.php.)</li>
<li>Write your own custom Gallery loop/list. (Check MPP_Gallery_Query for details.)</li>
</ul>
<h3>The Future of MediaPress</h3>
<p>MediaPress does not utilize the BP Attachments API. I spoke with Singh to see what his plans are, when/if BP core adds better media support. &#8220;Yes, I will continue developing it even if BP adds its own media component,&#8221; he said. &#8220;MediaPress has a more versatile API than what will come in any media component in the next 2-3 years at least.&#8221;</p>
<p>Singh spent the last year and a half planning the plugin, but it was only within the last four months that he got serious about building it. &#8220;I spent most of the time planning the architecture and API. My basic goal was to make it easy for site admins as well as developers to use and extend the plugin,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>MediaPress is open source and will remain free to use, as Singh&#8217;s primary goal is better community adoption. After the first release, he is planning on putting the plugin on GitHub and will also submit it to WordPress.org. He hopes to build a community around it.</p>
<p>Singh will be retiring BP Gallery in favor of MediaPress. &#8220;Things have changed in last 4 years &#8211; custom post types, taxonomy APIs made it into WordPress core, as well as multisite,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We needed a plugin to reflect these changes and work better with the current APIs. I did not feel updating BP Gallery will do it justice.&#8221;</p>
<p>There are very few media plugins for BuddyPress at the moment, and Singh said that it seemed all of them were either bloated or very limited in options. MediaPress is currently the most advanced gallery/album solution for BuddyPress, even though it&#8217;s still in beta. I tested the plugin and found its UI to be fairly intuitive. It fits in like a natural part of BuddyPress. Check out the <a href="http://demos.buddydev.com/mediapress/activity/" target="_blank">live demo</a> to see it in action.</p>
<p>In the future, Singh plans to add support for WordPress (non-BuddyPress) sites and bbPress. If you&#8217;d like to help test the MediaPress beta, you can download it from <a href="http://buddydev.com/buddypress/presenting-mediapress-media-plugin-will-ever-need-buddypress/" target="_blank">BuddyDev.com</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 24 Oct 2014 05:13:16 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Matt: FB Rooms";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44309";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/fb-rooms/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:397:"<blockquote><p>We’re not trying to build the next Snapchat — we’re trying to build the next WordPress.<br />
&#8212; Josh Miller from Facebook</p></blockquote>
<p>Uh, okay! From the Verge&#8217;s article <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/23/7048495/facebook-rooms-brings-reddit-like-forums-to-your-iphone">Facebook&#039;s new Rooms app brings bite-sized forums to your iPhone</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Oct 2014 20:15:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:62:"WPTavern: JSTOR Launches Online Daily Magazine Using WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32503";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"http://wptavern.com/jstor-launches-online-daily-magazine-using-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3457:"<p>In a strategic effort to make academic journals more relevant to your average reader, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/" target="_blank">JSTOR</a> has launched an online daily magazine. The digital academic library offers full-text searches of 2,000+ journals, e-books, and primary sources. <a href="http://daily.jstor.org/" target="_blank">JSTOR Daily</a> will serve to bring more context to current events by connecting readers to relevant scholarly publications found within the JSTOR library.</p>
<p>The site&#8217;s authors tackle various complex issues, such as <a href="http://daily.jstor.org/stem-cells-offer-hope-for-treating-type-i-diabetes/" target="_blank">stem cell research</a>, <a href="http://daily.jstor.org/marijuana-and-public-health/" target="_blank">marijuana and public health</a>, <a href="http://daily.jstor.org/why-growing-more-food-wont-stop-hunger/" target="_blank">world hunger</a>, and more, by providing backstory using research from JSTOR&#8217;s wealth of scholarly publications.</p>
<p><strong>&#8220;JSTOR is primarily a digital library, and we haven’t produced our own content before, so this is a real shift for the organization,”</strong> editor Catherine Halley told NiemanLab in a recent <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/10/opening-up-the-archives-jstor-wants-to-tie-a-library-to-the-news/" target="_blank">interview</a>. Publishers of the new daily magazine selected WordPress to power the site, which currently publishes two to three short posts per day, interspersed with longer feature stories twice per week.</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/jstor-daily.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32503]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/jstor-daily.jpg?resize=345%2C500" alt="jstor-daily" class="alignright size-large wp-image-32540" /></a>JSTOR Daily&#8217;s design uses a slightly modified version of <a href="http://themeforest.net/item/simplemag-magazine-theme-for-creative-stuff/4923427" target="_blank">SimpleMag</a>, a magazine theme sold on Themeforest. Based on a quick view of the source, you can see that the site also utilizes common plugins, such as <a href="http://jetpack.me/" target="_blank">Jetpack</a> to power subscriptions and stats, <a href="http://www.gravityforms.com/" target="_blank">Gravity Forms</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-to-any/" target="_blank">Add to Any</a>, <a href="https://github.com/deconf/google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp" target="_blank">Google Analytics Dashboard for WP</a>, and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/" target="_blank">W3 Total Cache</a>.</p>
<p>The site is currently still in beta, as JSTOR experiments with its content strategy. Ordinarily, JSTOR serves its library content via paid subscriptions, though access is licensed mainly to academic institutions and their students. However, content linked within JSTOR daily has to be freely available to readers, since the purpose of the publication is to maximize JSTOR&#8217;s academic archive. Therefore, the publishers opted to make any timely or otherwise compelling content available for free, when linked within one of the stories. If you&#8217;re interested in getting your news mixed with a healthy dose of in-depth academic research, subscribe to the <a href="http://daily.jstor.org/newsletter/" target="_blank">JSTOR Daily bi-weekly newsletter</a> or add the site to your favorite feed reader.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:40:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"WPTavern: Unsplash Plugin Brings One-Click Stock Photo Uploads to the WordPress Media Library";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32458";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"http://wptavern.com/unsplash-plugin-brings-one-click-stock-photo-uploads-to-the-wordpress-media-library";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4059:"<p><a href="https://unsplash.com" target="_blank">Unsplash</a>, the free stock photo site, quickly became popular with designers, due to its tasteful curating of images. All of the high resolution images on the site are carefully selected, and you&#8217;d be hard-pressed to find a bad photo among them. Unsplash gradually grows its collection by adding 10 new photos every 10 days, all of which are available under the very permissive <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Zero</a> license.</p>
<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/unsplash-stock-photo-library/" target="_blank">Unsplash WP</a> is the first plugin created to bring these images into WordPress. With one click you can upload stock photos directly into the media library without having to leave the admin. Since Unsplash photo licensing allows you the freedom to copy, modify, distribute and use the photos without permission, you can use the images in your commercial endeavors, designs, blog posts, or anywhere on your site.</p>
<p>Once installed, you can add Unsplash photos from the plugin&#8217;s settings page or within the page/post editor. You have a few options for setting the upload image width and height, as well as the number of images per page. When editing content, you&#8217;ll find a new Unsplash Uploader button:</p>
<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/unsplash-button.png" rel="prettyphoto[32458]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/unsplash-button.png?resize=1025%2C522" alt="unsplash-button" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32488" /></a></p>
<p>When you click on the uploader, the most recent Unsplash images will be displayed in lightbox. You can toggle between recent, oldest, and random to select images to upload.</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/unsplash-media-library.png" rel="prettyphoto[32458]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/unsplash-media-library.png?resize=1025%2C506" alt="unsplash-media-library" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32463" /></a></p>
<p>The images you select will then be added to your media library for use. You&#8217;ll have to switch back to the media upload button to insert them into your content. The plugin will need to be able to write temporary images into the wp-content/plugins/unsplash-stock-photo-library directory for image processing, prior to uploading them to the media library. If you see the little red warning on an image, it means that you will need to check your server permissions before it will work.</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/check-permissions-yo.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32458]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/check-permissions-yo.jpg?resize=826%2C356" alt="check-permissions-yo" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32482" /></a></p>
<p>Unsplash WP was created by <a href="http://connekthq.com/" target="_blank">Darren Cooney</a>, author of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ajax-load-more/" target="_blank">Ajax Load More</a> plugin. After testing it, I was impressed by how smoothly it performs as well as the convenience of not having to leave the admin.</p>
<p>My only concern is that, with the growing popularity of Unsplash, some of the photos begin to look cliché and commonplace after you&#8217;ve seen them used on dozens of sites across the web. Ultimately, the best and most unique photographs are the ones you take, because they are tied to your own experience and perspective.</p>
<p>However, if you simply need to quickly prototype a design and want to have a bunch of nice images at your fingertips, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/unsplash-stock-photo-library/" target="_blank">Unsplash WP</a> is an excellent plugin that will save you quite a bit of time. <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/unsplash-stock-photo-library/" target="_blank">Download</a> it for free from WordPress.org.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 22:27:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"WPTavern: Tickets Still Available to Watch The WordCamp San Francisco Live Stream";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32471";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"http://wptavern.com/tickets-still-available-to-watch-the-wordcamp-san-francisco-live-stream";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1901:"<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wcsf.jpeg" rel="prettyphoto[32471]"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-24984" src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wcsf.jpeg?resize=810%2C300" alt="wcsf" /></a></p>
<p>This weekend, the annual WordPress conference known as <a title="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/" href="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp San Francisco</a> will take place. It&#8217;s the only conference to feature &#8220;The State of the Word&#8221; presented by Matt Mullenweg. If you can&#8217;t make it to the event, there are still plenty of <a title="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/tickets/" href="http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/tickets/">live stream tickets</a> available.</p>
<p>Live stream tickets cost $10 and allow you to enjoy the conference from the comfort of your home. However, if you buy a Live Stream Plus T-Shirt ticket for $18, you&#8217;ll receive a T-Shirt immediately following the event. When purchasing tickets, make sure you log into your <a title="https://wordcamp.org/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2F2014.sf.wordcamp.org%2Ftickets%2F" href="https://wordcamp.org/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2F2014.sf.wordcamp.org%2Ftickets%2F">WordPress.org account</a>.</p>
<p>An alternative to purchasing a live stream ticket is to check your local WordPress meetup as several of them are having live stream watch parties. If you&#8217;re a meetup organizer having a viewing party, please add the event in the comments. You can also follow the event by monitoring the <a title="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf">#wcsf</a> and <a title="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf14" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wcsf14">#wcsf14</a> hashtags on Twitter.</p>
<p>Sarah Gooding and I will be in attendance during the weekend of festivities so if you see us, stop and say hi.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 21:22:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"WPTavern: BuddyPress 2.2 Will Add Support for Composer";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32397";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"http://wptavern.com/buddypress-2-2-will-add-support-for-composer";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3355:"<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/composer-support-buddypress.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32397]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/composer-support-buddypress.jpg?resize=961%2C440" alt="composer-support-buddypress" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32418" /></a></p>
<p>BuddyPress lead developer <a href="http://byotos.com/" target="_blank">Paul Gibbs</a> committed <a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/9088" target="_blank">support for Composer</a> to BuddyPress core this week. Developers who want to check it out can find the json file at: <a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/composer.json?rev=9088" target="_blank">trunk/src/composer.json</a>.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re not yet familiar with <a href="https://getcomposer.org" target="_blank">Composer</a>, it&#8217;s essentially a tool for dependency management in PHP. It is designed to manage packages on a per-project basis by bringing in any dependent libraries that you declare in the <code>composer.json</code> file. The dependencies are then automatically installed in a <code>vendor</code> directory or other specified location inside your project.</p>
<p>BuddyPress is not yet listed on <a href="https://packagist.org/" target="_blank">Packagist.org</a> but should be added soon. Once it&#8217;s listed there, it can easily be declared as a dependency after the next version (2.2) is released.</p>
<pre class="brush: plain; title: ; notranslate">{
    "require": {
        "buddypress/buddypress": "~2.2"
    }
}</pre>
<p>BuddyPress 2.2 is expected in mid-January 2015, according to Gibbs&#8217; reply in the <a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/timeline?from=2014-10-22T08%3A12%3A09Z&precision=second" target="_blank">ticket</a> to add Composer. He plans to configure Packagist to pull from <a href="http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/buddypress/" target="_blank">http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/buddypress/</a>.</p>
<p>Because BuddyPress is identified as a WordPress plugin in its json file (&#8220;type&#8221;: &#8220;wordpress-plugin&#8221;), composer/installers will by default send it to the wp-content/plugins directory.</p>
<p>If you can&#8217;t wait two months, and you&#8217;re dying to use BuddyPress with Composer right now, there&#8217;s an alternative method. I spoke with WordPress <a href="http://composer.rarst.net/" target="_blank">Composer evangelist</a> Andrey Savchenko (<a href="https://twitter.com/rarst" target="_blank">@rarst</a>) regarding the news. He suggests that in the meantime developers could use <a href="http://wpackagist.org/" target="_blank">wpackagist</a>, which provides a mirror of the WordPress plugin and theme directories as a Composer repository.</p>
<pre class="brush: plain; title: ; notranslate">{
 "require"     : {
  "wpackagist-plugin/buddypress": "~2.1"
 },
 "repositories": [
  {
   "type": "composer",
   "url" : "http://wpackagist.org"
  }
 ]
}</pre>
<p>If you search for &#8220;WordPress&#8221; on Packagist, you&#8217;ll find many other projects, which can also be easily added into your next BuddyPress project. Composer support makes it easy to create a master <code>composer.json</code> file for your projects, that will save you time by allowing you to load all of your dependencies in a matter of seconds.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 10:32:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"WPTavern: How to Increase or Decrease The Font Size in The Visual Editor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32400";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"http://wptavern.com/how-to-increase-or-decrease-the-font-size-in-the-visual-editor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3068:"<a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/VisualEditorFontSizeFeaturedImage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32400]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32423" src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/VisualEditorFontSizeFeaturedImage.png?resize=640%2C200" alt="Visual Editor Font Size Featured Image" /></a>photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ush/3741182620/">Mr Ush</a> &#8211; <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>
<p>If you use the visual editor to write posts or pages, you&#8217;ll know that the font can sometimes be hard to read due to its size. Some themes use a tiny font in the visual editor and unless you know how to apply CSS changes, you&#8217;re stuck with it. Luckily, there&#8217;s a plugin available specifically for the purpose of adjusting the font size in the visual editor called <a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/visual-editor-font-size/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/visual-editor-font-size/">Visual Editor Font Size</a>.</p>
<p>Developed by <a title="http://extrapolate.me/" href="http://extrapolate.me/">Nikolay Bachiyski</a>, Visual Editor Font Size adds a meta box to the post editor. After installing and activating the plugin, check the screen options on the post editor and make sure the box next to Visual Editor Font Size is checked. The meta box has a plus and minus button to increase or decrease the font size. There&#8217;s also a sample of text to indicate how large or small the font is and the revert link resets the text to the default size.</p>
<a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/VisualEditorFontSizeMetaBox.png" rel="prettyphoto[32400]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32411" src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/VisualEditorFontSizeMetaBox.png?resize=783%2C334" alt="Visual Editor Font Size Meta Box" /></a>Visual Editor Font Size Meta Box
<p>Although it works fine in WordPress 4.0, I&#8217;d rather see the size adjusting buttons added to the TinyMCE editor. The editor is the first place I look to manipulate content in the visual editor and when I didn&#8217;t see any additional buttons, I thought the plugin was broken. This plugin is great if you don&#8217;t have the CSS knowledge or access to make the appropriate changes, but it&#8217;s not the best way to solve the problem.</p>
<p>If the theme you&#8217;re using doesn&#8217;t have a visual editor style applied to it, contact the author and send them <a title="http://codex.wordpress.org/Editor_Style" href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Editor_Style">this link</a>. It&#8217;s a Codex article that explains how to add a style to a theme specifically for the visual editor. When executed well, the content in the editor will look identical to what visitors see. <a title="http://themehybrid.com/themes/stargazer" href="http://themehybrid.com/themes/stargazer">Stargazer,</a> by Justin Tadlock, is an excellent example of a theme where the content in the visual editor is the same style that&#8217;s seen by visitors.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 09:36:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"WPTavern: Comparing The Photo Publishing Experience of WordPress For iOS to Facebook and Twitter";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32379";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:106:"http://wptavern.com/comparing-the-photo-publishing-experience-of-wordpress-for-ios-to-facebook-and-twitter";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5318:"<a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WelcomeHomeFeaturedImage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32379]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32387" src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WelcomeHomeFeaturedImage.png?resize=639%2C200" alt="Welcome Home Featured Image" /></a>photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/angusf/2165904810/">angusf</a> &#8211; <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>
<p>In late September, WordPress.com <a title="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-publishes-first-ever-video-ad-entitled-welcome-home" href="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-publishes-first-ever-video-ad-entitled-welcome-home">published the first in a series of short videos</a> that shows how easy it is to publish content from a mobile device. In the 15 second video entitled &#8220;<a title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfW2UJMIQvQ&feature=youtu.be" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfW2UJMIQvQ&feature=youtu.be">Welcome Home,</a>&#8221; a user is seen taking photos with an iPhone in various locations. Near the end of the video, the user taps the WordPress mobile app icon and sees a post with one of the images captured by the phone. What&#8217;s not shown is the process of publishing the photo.</p>
<p><span class="embed-youtube"></span></p>
<p>The take away from the video is that it&#8217;s easy to publish photos to WordPress.com from a mobile device. With that in mind, I was curious what it&#8217;s like to perform the same task with other social networks on a mobile device. The following is my experience using <a title="https://apps.wordpress.org/" href="https://apps.wordpress.org/">WordPress For iOS</a> for this specific task and how it compares to using Facebook and Twitter.</p>
<h2>The WordPress For iOS Process</h2>
<p>The first thing I do is take a photo with my phone. Next, I load the WordPress For iOS app. I tap the Pencil icon in the lower right corner and make sure to select my WordPress.com account. I give the post a title which is normally related to the image, then write some content. Writing a lot of content on the iPhone is not an ideal experience so I usually keep it short.</p>
<p>Next, I add an image to the post. Selecting a photo from the phone and uploading it to WordPress is an easy task. After the photo is inserted, I head into the Options area. From here, I assign a Category and relevant Tags. I preview the post and if I like what I see, I tap the Publish button.</p>
<a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/DogInChair.png" rel="prettyphoto[32379]"><img class="wp-image-32384 size-large" src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/DogInChair.png?resize=281%2C500" alt="WordPress For iOS Post Preview" /></a>WordPress For iOS Post Preview
<p>While I&#8217;m not forced to assign a Category or Tags to posts, it&#8217;s a good practice and one I&#8217;ve already established with the site.</p>
<h2>The Facebook on iOS Process</h2>
<p>I open the Facebook app and select Photo. I&#8217;m given the choice to either select a photo from the phone&#8217;s media library or to take a picture. The ability to use the camera to take a photo for a post is a distinct difference between the Facebook app and WordPress. I usually have an image ready to publish but when I don&#8217;t, taking a photo within the app is a nice convenience. After selecting a photo, it&#8217;s uploaded to Facebook where I then add context for the image.</p>
<p>With the Facebook app, I can add other data to the post such as location, the people I was with or who are in the photo, and my mood. Most of the time, the additional information doesn&#8217;t apply to my photo. After adding some context, I tap the Post button. Boiled down to the simplest procedure, I can publish a photo post on Facebook in five steps.</p>
<ol>
<li>Open App</li>
<li>Select Photo</li>
<li>Choose or Take Photo</li>
<li>Apply Context</li>
<li>Post</li>
</ol>
<p>I don&#8217;t have to worry about assigning a category or tags to Facebook posts.</p>
<h2>The Twitter on iOS Process</h2>
<p>I open the Twitter app and tap the button to write a new Tweet. I tap the button to add media and similar to Facebook, I can either choose from the phone&#8217;s media library or take a photo. After selecting an image, I add context, then tap the send button. I don&#8217;t have to worry about tags or categories.</p>
<h2>Not The Simplest, But The Most Future Proof</h2>
<p>WordPress For iOS isn&#8217;t the simplest way to share photos with the world but it&#8217;s the most future proof. It may be more work, but an added benefit to using WordPress.com is its <a title="http://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/" href="http://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/">Publicize feature</a>. When a post is published, WordPress.com can send it to both Twitter and Facebook. This is an ideal way to share photos to the widest possible audience while maintaining full control of your content.</p>
<p>Facebook and Twitter are islands where you have no control and the carpet can be pulled out from under you. But at WordPress.com, you have a place to call your own and if you desire, you can pack up your content and leave. This is what the message &#8220;Welcome Home&#8221; means to me. What does it mean to you?</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 08:30:36 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"WPTavern: Initiatives Being Developed Alongside WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32296";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"http://wptavern.com/initiatives-being-developed-alongside-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6434:"<a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/OpportunityFeaturedImage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32296]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32335" src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/OpportunityFeaturedImage.png?resize=639%2C287" alt="Opportunity Featured Image" /></a>photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/streamishmc/2340150187/">{Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}</a> &#8211; <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/">cc</a>
<p>While it&#8217;s easy to focus on WordPress core development, there are a handful of satellite projects to keep an eye on. There is so much happening around the WordPress project, it&#8217;s tough to keep up. This post highlights some of the satellite projects and initiatives that are being developed concurrently with WordPress.</p>
<h2>Feature Plugin: Improve Image Editing</h2>
<p>Led by Siobhan McKeown, the <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/ui/2014/07/07/feature-plugin-improving-image-editing/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/ui/2014/07/07/feature-plugin-improving-image-editing/">Image Flow project</a> is aimed at improving the image editing experience in WordPress. It&#8217;s a feature that will likely not be removed, so the team is doing what it can to improve it. In the most recent meeting, the group <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/ui/2014/10/21/image-flow-update-21st-october-wireframe-discussion/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/ui/2014/10/21/image-flow-update-21st-october-wireframe-discussion/">discussed various wireframes</a> and will be making changes based on community feedback. The group meets every Friday and uses Google Hangout to conduct meetings.</p>
<h2>Scalable Dropdowns</h2>
<p>Created by Helen Hou-Sandi, the scalable dropdowns project is focused on addressing some long-standing issues with dropdowns in WordPress, specifically for <a title="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/19867" href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/19867">users</a> and <a title="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/9864" href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/9864">pages</a>. An <a title="https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2014-10-08&sort=asc#m936665" href="https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2014-10-08&sort=asc#m936665">initial meeting</a> has taken place on IRC and as a result, several issues have been <a title="https://github.com/helenhousandi/wp-19867-9864/issues" href="https://github.com/helenhousandi/wp-19867-9864/issues">opened on Github</a> for work and discussion. If you&#8217;re interested, review the issues on Github and contribute where you&#8217;re able to. Questions related to the project can be <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/10/10/scalable-dropdowns-update/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/10/10/scalable-dropdowns-update/">asked here</a>.</p>
<h2>Meta, Date, and Taxonomy Query Improvements</h2>
<p>Boone Gorges is <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/10/02/meta-date-and-tax-query-improvements-in-wp-4-1/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/10/02/meta-date-and-tax-query-improvements-in-wp-4-1/">leading the way</a> towards improving <code>WP_Meta_Query</code>, <code>WP_Tax_Query</code>, and <code>WP_Date_Query</code>. The improvements are slated for WordPress 4.1. According to a recent <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/10/20/update-on-query-improvements-in-4-1/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/10/20/update-on-query-improvements-in-4-1/">project update</a>, most of the proposed changes Gorges listed in the initial post have been made.</p>
<h2>Inline Documentation</h2>
<p>Shortly after WordCamp San Francisco 2013, the <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/inline-docs/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/inline-docs/">inline docs team</a> began working on providing inline documentation to every hook in WordPress. The team successfully completed documented every action and filter hook as part of the release of WordPress 3.9. In a <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/09/29/were-discussing-js-docs-at-this-weeks-inline-docs-chat/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2014/09/29/were-discussing-js-docs-at-this-weeks-inline-docs-chat/">recent meeting</a>, the group discussed options for adopting a documentation standard for core JavaScript.</p>
<h2>WordPress Training</h2>
<p>The <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/training/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/">training initiative</a> is a proposed <a title="http://make.wordpress.org/training/theme-curriculum/" href="http://make.wordpress.org/training/theme-curriculum/">curriculum</a> that covers everything from explaining what a theme is, to creating and altering child themes. The group is working on various training modules that make up each class. In their <a title="https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-getinvolved&day=2014-10-14&sort=asc" href="https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-getinvolved&day=2014-10-14&sort=asc">most recent meeting</a>, the group discussed the status of modules in progress, infrastructure for testing modules, and a team training sign up form. If you&#8217;re interested in contributing to this project, the team has meetings every <strong>Tuesday 18:00 UTC</strong> in the<strong> #wordpress-getinvolved</strong> IRC channel.</p>
<h2>Opportunities to Contribute</h2>
<p>I&#8217;ve only scratched the surface with the number of initiatives available to contribute to. Whether you have a special interest in <a title="http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/" href="http://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/">accessibility</a>, <a title="http://make.wordpress.org/ui/" href="http://make.wordpress.org/ui/">UI</a>, <a title="http://make.wordpress.org/mobile/" href="http://make.wordpress.org/mobile/">mobile</a>, <a title="http://make.wordpress.org/support/" href="http://make.wordpress.org/support/">support</a>, <a title="http://make.wordpress.org/themes/" href="http://make.wordpress.org/themes/">themes</a>, or <a title="http://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/" href="http://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/">translations</a>, there&#8217;s a project that could use your help. The best way to stay informed of new and existing initiatives is visit <a title="https://make.wordpress.org/" href="https://make.wordpress.org/">Make.WordPress.org</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 04:06:05 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Matt: Retina 5k Mac";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44298";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/retina-5k-mac/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2380:"<p><img class="alignright  wp-image-44300" src="http://i1.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2014/10/imac-retina-step1-hero-2014.jpeg?resize=354%2C213" alt="imac-retina-step1-hero-2014" /> To me one of the most meaningful shifts in computing the past few years has been how the resolution of displays is getting higher and higher, and interfaces are starting to become resolution independent. I feel like when pixels disappear there&#8217;s less of a wall between people and the technology, it starts to blend and meld a bit more. It&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve been personally passionate about since the first retina iPhone, tirelessly beating the drum at <a href="http://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> to make everything we do shine on hi-DPI screens, or leading the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2013/12/parker/">WordPress 3.8 release</a> that brought in MP6 project to make WordPress&#8217; aesthetics cleaner and vector-based.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m sitting in front of a <a href="http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/">Retina 5k iMac</a> right now typing this to you. (It was supposed to arrive on Friday but came a few days early.)</p>
<p>It&#8217;s the most gorgeous desktop display I&#8217;ve ever seen, breathtaking at first and then like all great work becomes invisible and you forget that there was ever a time when displays weren&#8217;t this beautiful. (Until you look at some lesser monitor again.)</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been using 4k displays, <a href="http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00LFNDLVG/">the Sharp</a> and <a href="http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00DJ4BIKA/">the ASUS</a>, with Mac Pros for a few months now, and to be honest they come close, but this takes the cake in every possible way, including the design and aesthetics of the computer/display itself which is laptop-thin at the edges. If you&#8217;ve been on the fence, and you&#8217;re okay with the <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/20/retina-imac-review/">tradeoffs an iMac has in general</a>, get one. I can&#8217;t wait for them to do a 5k Thunderbolt display (but it sounds like it <a href="http://www.slashgear.com/an-apple-thunderbolt-5k-display-dont-hold-your-breath-17351284/">might be at least a year away</a>).</p>
<p>P. S. If you&#8217;re looking for a gift for the iMac that has everything, <a href="http://www.hardgraft.com/collections/extras-1/imac">consider a slipper to keep its feet warm</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:42:59 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"WPTavern: Monster Widgets for bbPress and BuddyPress Make It Easy to Test Core Widgets";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32267";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"http://wptavern.com/monster-widgets-for-bbpress-and-buddypress-make-it-easy-to-test-core-widgets";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3265:"<a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/monster.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32267]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/monster.jpg?resize=700%2C348" alt="photo credit: massdistraction - cc" class="size-full wp-image-32363" /></a>photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sharynmorrow/3019436/">massdistraction</a> &#8211; <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>
<p>The original <a href="http://wptavern.com/monster-widget-a-useful-wordpress-theme-testing-tool" target="_blank">Monster Widget</a> plugin is a handy tool created by Automattic to assist theme developers with testing. Essentially, it allows you to quickly drop all core widgets into your sidebar at once, saving you the trouble of having to add them individually.</p>
<p>Now you can get the same for bbPress and BuddyPress, thanks to a two new plugins from <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mercime/" target="_blank">@mercime</a>, a contributor on both WordPress sister projects.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress-monster-widget/" target="_blank">BuddyPress Monster Widget</a> makes it easy to populate your sidebar with all of the BP core widgets, including the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Log In</li>
<li>Members</li>
<li>Who&#8217;s Online</li>
<li>Recently Active Members</li>
<li>Friends</li>
<li>Groups</li>
<li>Sitewide Messages</li>
<li>Recent Networkwide Posts</li>
</ul>
<p>The widgets are pre-configured to show a set number of blog posts, members, friends, etc. The list of widgets displayed can be altered by using the &#8216;buddypress-monster-widget-config&#8217; filter included in the plugin.</p>
<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/buddypress-monster-widget.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32267]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/buddypress-monster-widget.jpg?resize=501%2C299" alt="buddypress-monster-widget" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32353" /></a></p>
<p>The <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-monster-widget/" target="_blank">bbPress Monster Widget</a> plugin allows you to add all of the bbPress core widgets to your sidebar in one instance, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Log In</li>
<li>Forum Views</li>
<li>Forum Search Form</li>
<li>Forums</li>
<li>Forum Topics</li>
<li>Forum Statistics</li>
<li>Forum Replies</li>
</ul>
<p>The bbPress Monster Widget also comes pre-configured with a set number of topics and replies displayed. The default list of widgets can be altered by using the &#8216;bbpress-monster-widget-config&#8217; filter.</p>
<p>When creating a theme for public distribution, it&#8217;s important to make sure you know how the core widgets are going to look with your theme applied. This is especially true for community-oriented sites that utilize bbPress and BuddyPress, because the widgets often play a big part in connecting members to recent activity on the site. Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-monster-widget/" target="_blank">bbPress</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress-monster-widget/" target="_blank">BuddyPress</a> monster widgets from WordPress.org to make it quick and easy to test the core widgets.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:00:28 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"WPTavern: Compass: A Free Starter Theme for WordPress Built with Hybrid Core, Bourbon, and Neat";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32153";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"http://wptavern.com/free-compass-starter-theme-for-wordpress-built-with-hybrid-core-bourbon-and-neat";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6576:"<a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/compass.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32153]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/compass.jpg?resize=1023%2C487" alt="photo credit: Theresa Thompson - cc" class="size-full wp-image-32316" /></a>photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/theresasthompson/7163227255/">Theresa Thompson</a> &#8211; <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>
<p>The life of a frontend developer has changed a great deal over the past few years, with the introduction of new technologies for authoring CSS and automating tasks. We&#8217;re starting to see that trickle down into every new WordPress starter theme.</p>
<p>These days you&#8217;ve got to <code>npm install allthiscrazystuff</code> just to get started on a project. Once you&#8217;ve gone through the setup, you&#8217;re ready to work more efficiently with many of the more boring tasks automated for you.</p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/FlagshipWP/Compass" target="_blank">Compass</a> is a new WordPress starter theme that incorporates a host of modern web development technologies to help you create themes faster while staying in line with WordPress coding standards. The folks at <a href="http://flagshipwp.com/" target="_blank">Flagship</a>, a soon-to-launch theme shop, released Compass for free earlier this month, claiming that it is <strong>&#8220;the most advanced WordPress starter theme in existence.&#8221;</strong></p>
<p><em>Note: The Compass theme name keeps with the company&#8217;s nautical vibe, but it&#8217;s not to be confused with the open source <a href="http://compass-style.org/" target="_blank">Compass</a> CSS framework built with Sass.</em></p>
<p>Out of the box, the theme is fairly plain but, thankfully, not hideous. Obviously, it&#8217;s a starter theme, so the point is to provide the basics for getting started on your own beautiful creation.</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/compass-starter-theme.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32153]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/compass-starter-theme.jpg?resize=690%2C375" alt="compass-starter-theme" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32319" /></a></p>
<h4>Sass, Bourbon, and Neat with Composer Support</h4>
<p>Similar to the <a href="http://wptavern.com/some-like-it-neat-a-free-wordpress-starter-theme-built-with-underscores-bourbon-and-neat" target="_blank">Some Like It Neat</a> starter theme, Compass features support for <a href="http://sass-lang.com/" target="_blank">Sass</a>, <a href="http://bourbon.io/" target="_blank">Bourbon</a>, and <a href="http://neat.bourbon.io/" target="_blank">Neat</a>. The theme uses <a href="https://getcomposer.org/" target="_blank">Composer</a> to manage dependencies for PHP, allowing you to declare the dependent libraries for your specific project to have them installed for you.</p>
<h4>Grunt</h4>
<p>The Flagship team has worked hard to create what they believe to be the most advanced and robust <a href="http://gruntjs.com/" target="_blank">Grunt</a> workflow available for WordPress theme development. You&#8217;ll need to install <a href="http://nodejs.org/" target="_blank">Node.js</a> to run the Grunt task runner with the Compass theme, although many theme developers will likely already have it installed. Some of the tasks will also require external command-line applications, which you&#8217;ll need to install as global Node.js packages.</p>
<p>Once you&#8217;re ready to roll, you&#8217;ll be able to automate an amazing number of tasks associated with theme development, including things like auto-prefixing CSS properties, tidying up style.css to match the WordPress Coding Standards, generating the RTL style sheet, optimizing images, and much more. Here&#8217;s a short sampling:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>grunt build:dependencies</code></li>
<li><code>grunt build:css</code></li>
<li><code>grunt build:font</code></li>
<li><code>grunt build:images</code></li>
<li><code>grunt build:js</code></li>
<li><code>grunt build:i18n</code></li>
<li><code>grunt check</code></li>
<li><code>grunt package</code></li>
</ul>
<p>Check out the documentation on GitHub for the comprehensive <a href="https://github.com/FlagshipWP/Compass#tasks" target="_blank">list of available tasks</a> included in the Compass theme.</p>
<h5>Hybrid Core</h5>
<p>Compass is built on top of Justin Tadlock&#8217;s <a href="http://themehybrid.com/hybrid-core" target="_blank">Hybrid Core</a>, one of the oldest and most developer-friendly frameworks for building WordPress themes. The Compass release post explains why Flagship went with Hybrid Core:</p>
<blockquote><p>There are so many things that are going to be necessary on nearly every project, and they’re regularly done poorly in many of the themes that we’ve used and tested. Justin has done an amazing job of doing things “the WordPress way” and has been building and iterating Hybrid Core for many years.</p></blockquote>
<p>The framework handles functionality that most themes commonly require, such breadcrumbs, grabbing media, integrating microdata like schema.org, pagination, theme layouts, and translation.</p>
<p>Like many other new starter themes, Compass also offers support for the <a href="https://github.com/zamoose/themehookalliance" target="_blank">Theme Hook Alliance</a> project in an effort to provide a common set of entry points for plugin and theme developers looking to extend the theme.</p>
<p>Although Flagship hasn&#8217;t yet officially launched, the site shows a preview of a few planned themes that were built using Compass as a starter theme.</p>
<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/flagship-themes.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32153]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/flagship-themes.jpg?resize=962%2C418" alt="flagship-themes" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32305" /></a></p>
<p>The theme shop will soon launch with a unique pricing model that doesn&#8217;t involve bundle or theme club pricing. Each theme is priced at $199, with a $99 annual fee for support. The Compass starter theme that they use to build all of their products is open source and available to developers for free on <a href="https://github.com/FlagshipWP/Compass" target="_blank">GitHub</a>. Check out the <a href="http://community.flagshipwp.com/t/getting-started/37" target="_blank">Getting Started</a> guide for documentation, including video tutorials on installing the tools and working with Compass.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 21 Oct 2014 19:40:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"WPTavern: Easily Edit a Post or Page Using The Slash Edit Plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32149";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"http://wptavern.com/easily-edit-a-post-or-page-using-the-slash-edit-plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2060:"<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SlashEditFeaturedImage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32149]"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32264" src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SlashEditFeaturedImage.png?resize=650%2C200" alt="Slash Edit Featured Image" /></a></p>
<p>If you&#8217;re not a fan of the admin bar or it&#8217;s disabled and you want a shortcut to edit posts in WordPress, you might be interested in a new plugin called <a title="https://wordpress.org/plugins/slash-edit/" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/slash-edit/">Slash Edit</a>. Developed by <a title="http://www.ronalfy.com/" href="http://www.ronalfy.com/">Ronald Huereca</a>, Slash Edit adds the ability to edit the following items by adding <strong>/edit</strong> to the end of a url.</p>
<ul>
<li>Posts</li>
<li>Pages</li>
<li>Custom Post Types</li>
<li>Author and Taxonomy Archives</li>
</ul>
<p>To load the appropriate editing interface, visit a post or page while logged into WordPress and add <strong>/edit</strong> to the end of the url. It can also be used as a shortcut to login to the backend of WordPress.</p>
<p>Huereca works in an environment where the admin bar is consistently disabled. He created the plugin to provide a convenient way to edit pages or posts without having to search for them in the backend. &#8220;I thought, wouldn&#8217;t it be cool to just add &#8220;/edit&#8221; to the end of a post or page and be redirected to the right place in the admin panel?&#8221;</p>
<p>Huereca doesn&#8217;t know what else could be added to the plugin to fulfill its basic purpose. &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure how much farther this plugin can go, but the WordPress community is ingenious as far as feature requests, so I&#8217;m eager to get feedback on the base feature set.&#8221; I tested the plugin on WordPress 4.0 and it works as advertised. To keep tabs on development, you can <a title="https://github.com/ronalfy/slash-edit" href="https://github.com/ronalfy/slash-edit">follow the project</a> on Github.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 21 Oct 2014 03:06:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"WPTavern: Jason Schuller to Re-Enter WordPress Theme Market with Niche Admin Designs";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32202";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"http://wptavern.com/jason-schuller-to-re-enter-wordpress-theme-market-with-niche-admin-designs";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7575:"<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/pickle-preview.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32202]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/pickle-preview.jpg?resize=972%2C462" alt="pickle-preview" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32216" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://jason.sc/" target="_blank">Jason Schuller</a>, the original founder of the <a href="http://press75.com/" target="_blank">Press75</a> theme company, has been off the radar for a few years as he pursued experiments with alternative publishing platforms. He officially exited the commercial WordPress theme business earlier this year when <a href="http://wptavern.com/press75-acquired-by-westwerk-for-undisclosed-amount" target="_blank">Press75 was acquired by Westwerk</a>, following a sharp decline in the shop&#8217;s monthly revenue.</p>
<p>Prior to selling his company, Schuller had begun to focus more on his experimental projects, <a href="http://dropplets.com/" target="_blank">Dropplets</a>, <a href="https://leeflets.com/" target="_blank">Leeflets</a>, and <a href="https://cinemati.co/" target="_blank">Cinematico</a>. Over the years, he had become disillusioned with the software, as he watched WordPress become increasingly more complex. This frustration, coupled with the weight of complex frameworks that started devouring the WordPress theme market, essentially vaporized his passion for the software and pushed him out to make something new.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, in an <a href="http://wptavern.com/interview-with-jason-schuller-founder-of-press75-com" target="_blank">interview</a> with Jeff Chandler, Schuller expressed his dissatisfaction with trying to make WordPress do what he wanted and said that he wouldn&#8217;t be concentrating his efforts on WordPress in the immediate future.</p>
<h3>Video Preview of Custom WordPress Admin for the &#8220;Pickle&#8221; Project</h3>
<p>In his never-ending quest to simplify publishing online, Schuller has once again picked up WordPress to experiment with creating a radically simplified admin design for <a href="https://leeflets.com/templates?template=pickle" target="_blank">Pickle</a>, his restaurant-themed HTML template.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550"><p>A short video preview of my <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash">#WordPress</a> admin redesign for “Pickle”: <a href="http://t.co/lvQtgIaAWP">http://t.co/lvQtgIaAWP</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/design?src=hash">#design</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Jason Schuller (@jschuller) <a href="https://twitter.com/jschuller/status/524235736166330368">October 20, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>Traditionally, making a template like that editable in WordPress ends up being a complex thing for your average user to navigate in the admin. The <a href="http://jason.sc/pickle-preview" target="_blank">preview video</a> shows how Schuller has re-imagined the admin for his niche one page template.</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/pickle-admin.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32202]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/pickle-admin.jpg?resize=964%2C520" alt="pickle-admin" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32235" /></a></p>
<p>He has essentially removed the admin, de-registered all the styles and many of the components, in an effort to create a custom CMS for this particular template. The result is a better correlation between the content editing experience and the actual website, with simplified action buttons.</p>
<p>If you watch the preview, you&#8217;ll hear Schuller summarize why he created the simplified admin:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is my biggest issue with WordPress right now. It doesn&#8217;t scale backward for minimalist websites like this. The CMS should reflect, in my opinion, what you&#8217;re trying to accomplish with your website, and all of these unnecessary components of WordPress just really don&#8217;t need to be here unless you need them for what you&#8217;re trying to accomplish.</p></blockquote>
<p>Schuller said that it took him approximately two days to customize the WordPress admin to suit his template. <strong>&#8220;I&#8217;m nearly finished with it. It’s going to launch as a downloadable theme first and then I’ll be launching a hosted version as well,&#8221;</strong> he said.</p>
<p>The theme will not be launching on Leeflets but rather on a new domain, yet to be determined, bringing Schuller back into the WordPress theme market. Why is he returning?</p>
<p>&#8220;With this particular project, I really just wanted to get my vision out of my head as quick as possible,&#8221; he said. &#8220;With that in mind, I couldn&#8217;t see creating a custom CMS just for Pickle, so I figured WordPress would be the best way to do that quickly. Plus, you still can’t ignore WordPress’s reach.&#8221;</p>
<p>I asked Schuller if the Pickle admin theme is a one time project or if he plans to create more niche admin themes to accompany his designs. &#8220;If Pickle goes well, I have a few other niche admins in mind for specific templates,&#8221; he replied.</p>
<p><strong>&#8220;My goal is really simple &#8211; to help my customers/users create and manage websites. If WordPress helps me do that in an efficient way, I’m all for it. But I’ll be doing it my way this time around,&#8221;</strong> he emphasized.</p>
<p>Schuller&#8217;s minimalist approach to the WordPress admin is something that he hopes will be easier for his target market to wrap their brains around. The popularity of the Pickle template is what spurred him on to create an editable version using WordPress. &#8220;I wasn’t expecting much when I released the Pickle HTML template,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But it was an instant hit. There are quite a few people helping restaurants create websites with it. That’s what triggered the idea to make a WordPress version.&#8221;</p>
<p>At the moment Schuller is in touch with his market on a very small scale, but he hopes that it will expand with a successful launch of the Pickle theme. &#8220;My hope is that the WordPress version makes it even more enticing for businesses looking for a minimalist website/solution.&#8221;</p>
<p>Schuller has identified a problem that many developers are hoping to solve. WordPress core is moving towards bridging the separation between the editing experience and the display of the content, with improvements to the customizer and experimental projects like the frontend editor. Others hope that the new JSON REST API will make it easier for developers to create custom admins.</p>
<p>These changes cannot come soon enough, but will they be fully able to provide a more natural editing experience for users? Those, like Schuller, who have wrestled with dissatisfaction, have a decent shot at creating a revolutionary editing experience for the 10 year old platform. His inspiring work on the Pickle admin breaks WordPress out of the box and forces developers to look at the content editing experience in a new way.</p>
<p>A more modular admin that can easily be scaled back for minimalist websites is something that would allow developers to truly customize the CMS for any niche template or project. The WordPress admin then becomes a chameleon of sorts, able to disappear into its surroundings with the content in focus. Schuller&#8217;s <a href="http://jason.sc/pickle-preview" target="_blank">Pickle experiment</a> is a good example of this, and likely part of a trend that we&#8217;ll see more in the future.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 20 Oct 2014 22:14:48 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"WPTavern: The First “Rate and Review a Plugin Day” is a Success";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32151";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"http://wptavern.com/the-first-rate-and-review-a-plugin-day-is-a-success";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7981:"<p>Thanks to everyone who participated in the first &#8220;<a title="http://wptavern.com/rate-and-review-a-wordpress-plugin-day-set-for-october-17th" href="http://wptavern.com/rate-and-review-a-wordpress-plugin-day-set-for-october-17th">Rate and Review a plugin day&#8221;</a>. After reviewing the #<a title="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wppluginreviewday?src=hash" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wppluginreviewday?src=hash">wppluginreviewday</a> hashtag on Twitter, it&#8217;s clear that a lot of people submitted reviews to their favorite plugins. Based on an <a title="https://twitter.com/richardtape/status/523331218973405184" href="https://twitter.com/richardtape/status/523331218973405184">estimate by Richard Tape</a>, 455 reviews were published on October 17th. When compared to 254 reviews on October 16th, that&#8217;s an increase of 180%. Here are a few noteworthy mentions of the hashtag in action.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550"><p>Wrote a review for <a href="https://twitter.com/eddwp">@eddwp</a> here <a href="https://t.co/zvwWNJaGtu">https://t.co/zvwWNJaGtu</a> Awesome feeling! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wppluginreviewday?src=hash">#wppluginreviewday</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Bharath Mandava  (@_mandava) <a href="https://twitter.com/_mandava/status/523321112222900225">October 18, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550"><p>So I delivered a plugin review on .org today. <a href="http://t.co/4ua0iG0XjQ">http://t.co/4ua0iG0XjQ</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wppluginreviewday?src=hash">#wppluginreviewday</a> /cc: <a href="https://twitter.com/stevengliebe">@stevengliebe</a> :)</p>
<p>&mdash; David Decker (@deckerweb) <a href="https://twitter.com/deckerweb/status/523217428311191552">October 17, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550"><p>For Rate &amp; Review a <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash">#WordPress</a> Plugin Day I gave kudos to <a href="https://twitter.com/iThemesSecurity">@iThemesSecurity</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wppluginreviewday?src=hash">#wppluginreviewday</a></p>
<p>&mdash; BobWP (@bobWP) <a href="https://twitter.com/bobWP/status/523121578268041216">October 17, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
<h2>Observations I Made While Submitting Reviews</h2>
<p>It took 90 minutes to rate and review the plugins I&#8217;ve depended on for years. I noticed some of the plugins haven&#8217;t been updated since 2010. In some cases, the last review a plugin received was from 2012 or earlier.</p>
<p>When I announced the holiday, I asked users to browse to the bottom of the plugin’s description page and click on the <em>broken</em> or <em>works</em> box. As I submitted my reviews, I forgot about the compatibility box. When submitting a review, there is a drop down menu to select which version of WordPress I&#8217;m using. I used this in combination with my review to tell people if the plugin works or not.</p>
<a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WPPluginReviewSubmissionForm.png" rel="prettyphoto[32151]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32152" src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WPPluginReviewSubmissionForm.png?resize=752%2C502" alt="WordPress Plugin Review Submission Form" /></a>WordPress Plugin Review Submission Form
<p>Clicking the works or doesn&#8217;t work button is an easy task but it&#8217;s a <strong>separate action</strong> from submitting a review. It&#8217;s also the last widget on the description page and depending on the length of the description, may be hidden from view. I suggest merging the compatibility box into the process of submitting a review so it&#8217;s one action. Even though submitting compatibility information can be as simple as pressing a mouse button, not many do it.</p>
<h2>The Disconnect Between WordPress.org and The Backend of WordPress</h2>
<p>Your ratings, reviews, and compatibility checks are contributions to WordPress. It’s actionable data that millions of people use to determine whether or not to use a plugin. The backend of WordPress is an area millions of users interact with yet, the option to rate and review plugins as well as submit compatibility information doesn&#8217;t exist. The plugin details modal doesn&#8217;t show the compatibility box on the plugin&#8217;s description page and although you can read reviews, you can&#8217;t rate or review plugins.</p>
<a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PluginDetailsModal.png" rel="prettyphoto[32151]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32173" src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PluginDetailsModal.png?resize=684%2C723" alt="Current Plugin Details Modal" /></a>Plugin Details Modal
<p>The plugin management page in WordPress hasn&#8217;t seen a visual upgrade in a long time. Here&#8217;s what it looks like in WordPress 4.0.</p>
<a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PluginManagementPage.png" rel="prettyphoto[32151]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32176" src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PluginManagementPage.png?resize=1025%2C530" alt="WordPress 4.0 Plugin Management Page" /></a>WordPress 4.0 Plugin Management Page
<p>WordPress 3.9 <a title="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-0-benny-now-available-for-download" href="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-0-benny-now-available-for-download">revamped the theme browsing experience</a> while 4.0 introduced a refreshed <a title="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-0-benny-now-available-for-download" href="http://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-0-benny-now-available-for-download">plugin install and search experience</a>. Perhaps it&#8217;s time to refresh the plugin management page. One suggestion is to create two different list views. The management page in 4.0 could be the slim, detailed view. The enhanced view could use the card concept as seen on the Add Plugins page. Instead of displaying the crowd sourced information, you&#8217;d be able to rate and review the plugin and submit compatibility info from within the card.</p>
<a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WordPressAddNewPluginCards.png" rel="prettyphoto[32151]"><img class="size-full wp-image-32179" src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/WordPressAddNewPluginCards.png?resize=1025%2C485" alt="WordPress 4.0 Plugin Cards" /></a>WordPress 4.0 Plugin Cards
<p>The problem with two different views is that a sub-set of users wouldn&#8217;t see the card view and stick with the default. In order to maximize the potential of obtaining crowd sourced data, the submission points have to be accessible by as many people as possible.</p>
<h2>Tighter Integration Between The Backend and WordPress.org</h2>
<p>In order to submit ratings and reviews, you need to be logged into a WordPress.org user account. I&#8217;m unsure on how to properly address this issue. One idea is for WordPress to provide a connection similar to Jetpack where I connect a WordPress powered site to my WordPress.org account. This could also act as an opt-in mechanism. Ultimately, I&#8217;d like to see better integration between the WordPress backend and the WordPress.org website.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not advocating that I be able to browse the WordPress.org website from the backend of WordPress, that&#8217;s what browsers are for. I see plenty of opportunities to connect certain actions on WordPress.org to the backend of WordPress, such as the ability to create a forum post to receive support.</p>
<h2>A New Annual Tradition</h2>
<p>While you don&#8217;t need a special day to review plugins, it&#8217;s a unique feeling to do something so many others across the world are doing at the same time. I&#8217;m encouraged to see so many people who have rated and reviewed their favorite plugins. Based on the feedback we&#8217;ve received, this will likely become an annual tradition.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 20 Oct 2014 18:54:55 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"WPTavern: Some Like It Neat: A Free WordPress Starter Theme Built with Underscores, Bourbon, and Neat";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32135";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"http://wptavern.com/some-like-it-neat-a-free-wordpress-starter-theme-built-with-underscores-bourbon-and-neat";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6075:"<a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bourbon-neat.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[32135]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bourbon-neat.jpg?resize=1024%2C488" alt="photo credit: j03 - cc" class="size-full wp-image-32137" /></a>photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/j03/2035547120/">j03</a> &#8211; <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>
<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/some-like-it-neat" target="_blank">Some Like it Neat</a> is a new starter theme for WordPress, based on the popular ultra-minimal <a href="http://underscores.me" target="_blank">Underscores</a> theme. It also incorporates <a href="http://bourbon.io" target="_blank">Bourbon</a>, a lightweight mixin library for <a href="http://sass-lang.com/" target="_blank">Sass</a>. On top of that it adds <a href="http://neat.bourbon.io" target="_blank">Neat</a>, which applies a semantic grid framework for Sass and Bourbon, enabling you to build any responsive layout that you can dream up.</p>
<p>Since Some Like It Neat is a simple starter theme, there&#8217;s not much to see in the screenshot, apart from a relatively blank canvas, waiting to be shaped and styled.</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/some-like-it-neat.png" rel="prettyphoto[32135]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/some-like-it-neat.png?resize=880%2C660" alt="some-like-it-neat" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32140" /></a></p>
<p>The power of this theme lies in the tools that it incorporates. Some Like It Neat expedites the creation of a modern frontend development workflow for WordPress theming with responsive grids and a few prepackaged styles. The theme offers support for the following tools:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://bourbon.io/" target="_blank">Bourbon</a>: A simple and lightweight mixin library for Sass</li>
<li><a href="http://neat.bourbon.io" target="_blank">Neat</a>: A lightweight semantic grid framework for Sass and Bourbon</li>
<li><a href="http://bitters.bourbon.io/" target="_blank">Bitters</a>: Scaffold styles, variables and structure for Bourbon projects</li>
<li><a href="http://refills.bourbon.io/" target="_blank">Refills</a>: Prepackaged patterns and components, built on top of Bourbon, Bitters, and Neat</li>
<li><a href="http://bower.io/" target="_blank">Bower</a>: A frontend package manager</li>
</ul>
<p>This is essentially everything you need for a Bourbon-soaked development workflow. Developers starting with this theme should already be familiar with Sass, since it&#8217;s the foundation for using Bourbon and Neat. If you need a Sass primer, Sitepoint has a great <a href="http://www.sitepoint.com/sass-for-wordpress-developers/" target="_blank">tutorial</a> on the basics. WP Beginner also has a <a href="http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/introduction-to-sass-for-new-wordpress-theme-designers/" target="_blank">quick introduction</a> to help WordPress theme designers get started with Sass.</p>
<p>Some Like It Neat also allows for <a href="http://gulpjs.com/" target="_blank">Gulp.js</a> task automation. <a href="http://alexhasnicehair.com/" target="_blank">Alex Vasquez</a>, the theme&#8217;s creator, says that this feature still has room for improvement. The theme currently includes support for the following tasks:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>gulp watch</code> &#8211; Starts up Gulp and watches your scss, js and php folder for changes, writes them out and refreshes the browser for you</li>
<li><code>gulp build</code> &#8211; Removes unnecessary files and packs up the required files into a nice and neat, installable, zip package</li>
</ul>
<p>Additionally, Some Like It Neat adds support for the <a href="https://github.com/zamoose/themehookalliance" target="_blank">Theme Hook Alliance</a> (THA), a community-driven project that offers a standardized set of third-party action hooks to theme developers to implement for more flexibility. THA has a growing list of <a href="https://github.com/zamoose/themehookalliance#tha-compatible-themes" target="_blank">compatible themes</a>. Vasquez opted for adding it to help keep things within the theme cleaner and easier to maintain.</p>
<h3>Why Use Bourbon and Neat?</h3>
<p>Incorporating Bourbon and its parallel projects into your WordPress theme is a matter of personal preference. In the past, Vasquez had used frontend frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation, but after discovering Bourbon+Neat, he found that it gave him a more efficient approach to theme creation:</p>
<blockquote><p>To achieve the responsiveness required of various projects, I would have to tear up my HTML, input my own selector classes and what have you, in addition to changing my CSS. I didn&#8217;t like it. I heard about <a href="http://neat.bourbon.io" target="_blank">Neat</a> and really liked its approach to a grid framework. You keep your HTML structure the way you like and all of the styling in your Sass files.</p></blockquote>
<p>If that sounds like a better workflow for you, then you may want to set aside some time to give this starter theme a try. It can be used  as a parent theme from which you create a highly customized child theme. Vasquez has outlined how to <a href="https://github.com/digisavvy/some-like-it-neat#getting-started" target="_blank">get started</a> in the documentation, which will walk you through installing Node, Sass, Gulp.js, etc. He also posted a handy <a href="https://github.com/digisavvy/some-like-it-neat#folder-structure" target="_blank">folder structure</a> as an example for how projects are structured with the starter theme.</p>
<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/some-like-it-neat" target="_blank">Some Like It Neat</a> is <a href="http://alexhasnicehair.com/" target="_blank">Alex Vasquez</a>&#8216;s first submission to the official WordPress Themes Directory. You can download it via your admin theme browser or from its <a href="https://github.com/digisavvy/some-like-it-neat" target="_blank">GitHub</a> repository.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 20 Oct 2014 18:04:52 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"Matt: Life and Work at the Distributed Wonderland";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44293";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/life-and-work-at-the-distributed-wonderland/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:229:"<p>Luca Sartoni writes <a href="http://lucasartoni.com/2014/10/14/how-i-fell-into-the-rabbit-hole-life-and-work-at-the-distributed-wonderland/">How I fell into the rabbit hole: life and work at the distributed wonderland</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:26:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"Matt: Run Better";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44263";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/run-better/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:544:"<p>Joe Boydston, the self-described &#8220;crazy running guy&#8221; who runs as far as 90+ miles from the airport to WordCamps or meetups when he lands, has <a href="http://crazyrunningguy.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/run-better/">written a bit about how to run better</a>. At our <a href="http://ma.tt/2014/09/automattic-grand-meetup-2014/">company meetup</a> he ran running workshops and coached a lot of people including myself, and applying his suggestions <a href="http://ma.tt/2014/10/streak/">I&#8217;ve been able to do a lot better</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 19 Oct 2014 23:51:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"Matt: Pink Drill Bits";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44261";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:37:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/pink-drill-bits/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:335:"<p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/10/08/susan_g_komen_teams_up_with_fracking_company_introduces_pink_drill_bits_for_the_cure/">Fracking company teams up with Susan G. Komen, introduces pink drill bits for the cure</a>, presented without comment. <cite>Hat tip: <a href="http://spitfirestrategies.com/">Kristin Grimm</a>.</cite></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 18 Oct 2014 23:27:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"WPTavern: Themosis Object-Oriented Development Framework for WordPress Now Available";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32082";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"http://wptavern.com/themosis-object-oriented-development-framework-for-wordpress-now-available";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4107:"<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/routes.png" rel="prettyphoto[32082]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/routes.png?resize=1025%2C598" alt="routes" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-26649" /></a></p>
<p>Version 1.0 of the <a href="http://wptavern.com/themosis-object-oriented-development-framework-for-wordpress-now-in-beta" target="_blank">Themosis development framework</a> is now available. Belgium-based application developer <a href="http://jlambe.be/" target="_blank">Julien Lambé</a> created Themosis in order to accelerate object-oriented development with WordPress. It offers a routing system for managing WordPress behavior on an application level and also includes a Laravel-esque templating engine for view files. Last week Lambé announced that the framework is now out of beta and ready for public use.</p>
<p><a href="http://framework.themosis.com/" target="_blank">Themosis</a>, which Lambé describes as <strong>“a mix between WordPress best practices and a typical MVC framework,”</strong> has evolved considerably since its beta period. Version 1.0 includes dozens of improvements based on developer feedback.</p>
<p>The website has been updated to provide complete <a href="http://framework.themosis.com/docs/" target="_blank">documentation</a> and code examples to help developers get started. <a href="http://framework.themosis.com/docs/installation/" target="_blank">Installation</a> is quick and easy, as Themosis uses <a href="https://getcomposer.org/" target="_blank">Composer</a> for dependency package management, so you can install and update everything needed in a matter of seconds. The framework is designed with respect to WordPress best practices and should work seamlessly with its APIs and plugins.</p>
<p>Themosis comes with local and production environments pre-configured in order to facilitate collaboration. Once you register your database credentials and application URLS, you&#8217;ll be able to define the different environment configurations, making it easy to move between development and production.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://framework.themosis.com/docs/framework/" target="_blank">framework guide</a> contains everything you need to know to get started structuring and building your application. The <a href="http://framework.themosis.com/docs/routing/" target="_blank">route API</a> docs cover all the conditional tags available with code samples for basic routing methods. Lambé describes the route system as &#8220;an enhanced &#8216;if&#8217; statement,&#8221; which is essentially based on WordPress conditional template tags and a closure callback.</p>
<p>The framework includes classes for handling AJAX requests, custom post types, metaboxes, custom fields, taxonomies, options, validation, and more. It also adds a unique set of <a href="http://framework.themosis.com/docs/helpers/" target="_blank">Helpers</a> which act as framework utility functions that run on the global scope.</p>
<p>Lambé has now separated the <a href="http://www.themosis.com/" target="_blank">Themosis studio</a> from the framework, which can be found at <a href="http://framework.themosis.com" target="_blank">framework.themosis.com</a>. He is launching a Themosis web agency, specializing in WordPress design and development, in order to fund future development of the framework to ensure its future.</p>
<p>The Themosis framework is an interesting option that could be very helpful for new WordPress developers, especially those who are used to using Laravel or those who simply want to structure and organize their code like a typical MVC framework. It provides another avenue for getting started using a structure that may be more approachable for PHP developers who are new to working with WordPress.</p>
<p>Themosis is an open source tool that Lambé decided to share with the community, and it will remain free to use. If you want to contribute to the project or report any issues, the framework can also be found on <a href="https://github.com/themosis/" target="_blank">GitHub</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:27:50 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"WPTavern: Watch The Q&amp;A Session Between Matt Mullenweg and Om Malik From WordCamp Europe";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=32059";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"http://wptavern.com/watch-the-qa-session-between-matt-mullenweg-and-om-malik-from-wordcamp-europe";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1950:"<p>Some of the sessions recorded at <a title="http://wordpress.tv/event/wordcamp-europe-2014/" href="http://wordpress.tv/event/wordcamp-europe-2014/">WordCamp Europe</a> are now available to watch on <a title="http://wordpress.tv" href="http://wordpress.tv">WordPress.TV</a>. The rest of the sessions will be added in the coming weeks. Included in the first batch of videos is the <a title="http://wordpress.tv/2014/10/03/matt-mullenweg-om-malik-qa/" href="http://wordpress.tv/2014/10/03/matt-mullenweg-om-malik-qa/">question and answer session</a> between Matt Mullenweg and Om Malik.</p>
<p>The session is an hour long and includes Mullenweg&#8217;s thoughts on the current status of WordPress, the media library, and what the platform may evolve into. One of the questions asked during the session is the role of women in the WordPress ecosystem.</p>
<p>At the 47 minute mark, you can hear the infamous &#8220;we love women&#8221; comment from a member of the audience. Mullenweg responds with &#8220;come onnnnn&#8221; with applause from the audience. Helen Hou-Sandí, who lead the release of WordPress 4.0, explains why saying &#8220;we love women&#8221; can cause <a title="http://helenhousandi.com/2014/09/unintentional-destruction/" href="http://helenhousandi.com/2014/09/unintentional-destruction/">unintentional destruction</a>.</p>
<p>Near the 53:40 minute mark, Mullenweg is asked, &#8220;How much should WordPress businesses be contributing to WordPress and involved with the project?&#8221; This is the question that prompted the 5% figure and his post, <a title="http://ma.tt/2014/09/five-for-the-future/" href="http://ma.tt/2014/09/five-for-the-future/">Five for the Future</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p>This is a great session filled with information related to WordPress, Automattic, open source in general, and the future of the platform. If you attended the session live or watched the video, let us know your thoughts in the comments.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Oct 2014 18:36:57 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Jeff Chandler";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"Matt: Moving into Management";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44170";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:44:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/moving-into-management/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:384:"<p>&#8220;The biggest misconception engineers have when thinking about moving into management is they think it&#8217;s a promotion.&#8221; &#8212; Lindsay Holmwood writes <a href="http://fractio.nl/2014/09/19/not-a-promotion-a-career-change/">It&#8217;s not a promotion &#8211; it&#8217;s a career change</a>. <cite>Hat tip: <a href="http://pento.net/">Gary Pendergast</a>.</cite></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Oct 2014 18:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"WPTavern: New Plugin Adds Open Source Emoji One Support to WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://wptavern.com/?p=31456";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"http://wptavern.com/new-plugin-adds-open-source-emoji-one-support-to-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4669:"<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/emoji-one.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[31456]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/emoji-one.jpg?resize=831%2C376" alt="emoji-one" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-31461" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://emojione.com/" target="_blank">Emoji One</a> is a new open source emoji set that is the first of its kind, designed specifically for the web. The set boasts more than 840 emoji. It was created to solve the perennial problem of translating emoji code from mobile devices while legally displaying the corresponding emoji icon on the web. The idea is to avoid displaying those ugly blank squares that you see so often, as illustrated on the Emoji One website:</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/emoji-one-problem-1.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[31456]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/emoji-one-problem-1.jpg?resize=795%2C392" alt="emoji-one-problem-1" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32029" /></a></p>
<p>Emoji One was also created to provide consistency across various mobile and web platforms. As things currently stand, you tend to get a slight variation in display depending on the mobile platform used to input the emoji.</p>
<p><a href="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/emoji-one-problem-2.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[31456]"><img src="http://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/emoji-one-problem-2.jpg?resize=824%2C464" alt="emoji-one-problem-2" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32033" /></a></p>
<p>Emoji One is tackling both of these problems head on with its new open source emoji set. It&#8217;s released under the MIT license, which is GPL-compatible. Check out a <a href="http://emojione.com/demo" target="_blank">live demo</a> of Emoji One to see the set in action.</p>
<h3>WP Emoji One</h3>
<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-emoji-one/" target="_blank">WP Emoji One</a> is the first plugin to bring Emoji One support to WordPress posts and pages. It is based on work from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/typepad-emoji-for-tinymce/" target="_blank">TypePad Emoji For TinyMCE</a> plugin. The emoji chooser can be launched via a button added to the visual editor.</p>
<p><a href="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/visual-editor-emoji-one.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[31456]"><img src="http://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/visual-editor-emoji-one.jpg?resize=822%2C264" alt="visual-editor-emoji-one" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32047" /></a></p>
<p>Clicking on the button opens a modal window with the Emoji One library, along with the option to choose the pixel size of the emoji inserted into the content.</p>
<p><a href="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/emoji-one-modal.jpg" rel="prettyphoto[31456]"><img src="http://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/emoji-one-modal.jpg?resize=818%2C598" alt="emoji-one-modal" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-32049" /></a></p>
<p>You don&#8217;t have to install anything on your mobile device to use Emoji One; just continue to use emoji as you have been. The WordPress plugin simply provides a more consistent experience for displaying emoji on the web.</p>
<p>I checked with the WP Emoji One plugin author to inquire about using the emoji in comments. He plans to add them to comments in the next release. BuddyPress and bbPress integration would also be very handy, as social sites are likely to derive greater benefits from offering emoji support.</p>
<p>Emoji One only recently launched on September 11, 2014. The team is currently working on creating the 250 new emojis that <a href="http://www.unicode.org/" target="_blank">Unicode</a> approved in June 2014, and will make those available soon.</p>
<p>You may have already seen Emjoi One icons in the wild here and there. The WordPress-powered Emoji One blog recently highlighted <a href="http://www.emojione.com/blog/slack-adds-emoji-one-gets-more-awesome/" target="_blank">Slack&#8217;s integration of Emoji One</a> as one of its default emoji options. As more companies and services begin to recognize the need for a universal emoji set, you can expect to see Emoji One popping up around the web in more places.</p>
<p>Better emoji support may someday find its way into WordPress core with enough popular support. In the meantime, you can use <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-emoji-one/" target="_blank">WP Emoji One</a> to extend WordPress&#8217; capabilities to provide a more consistent and colorful emoji display on your site.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:06:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"Matt: Dave Winer’s 20th";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"http://ma.tt/?p=44291";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"http://ma.tt/2014/10/dave-winers-20th/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:352:"<p>The Observer writes <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/12/happy-20th-anniversary-dave-winer-inventor-of-the-blog">Happy 20th anniversary to Dave Winer – inventor of the blog</a>. I&#8217;ve gotten a huge amount of inspiration, help, and feedback from Dave over the years, and I&#8217;m really happy he&#8217;s still at it.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:37:22 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"Post Status: Postmatic wants to revitalize your WordPress email, starting with comments";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"http://www.poststat.us/?p=7197";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"http://www.poststat.us/postmatic-wordpress-email/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4912:"<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7200" src="http://www.poststat.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/postmatic-752x307.gif" alt="postmatic" width="627" height="255" /></p>
<p><a href="http://gopostmatic.com/">Postmatic</a> is a new WordPress plugin that I think is quite promising. It&#8217;s aim is to eventually change the way you utilize WordPress email in many ways, but its comment functionality is what intrigued me immediately.</p>
<p>Postmatic currently allows users to subscribe to comments and posts by email; but what sets it apart is that it enables <em>reply by email</em> functionality as well. That&#8217;s something that has been high on my list of wants for a WordPress plugin for a long time, and I wanted it without switching to a third party system like Disqus.</p>
<p>All in all &#8212; aside from enabling replies by email &#8212; the current feature set is quite similar to Jetpack&#8217;s Subscriptions module. Postmatic has widgets for post subscriptions and will send subscribers new posts and allow them to get emailed comment notifications as well.</p>
<p></p>
<p>I asked Jason Lemieux, a co-founder of Postmatic, if they were considering a way to import from Jetpack or otherwise integrate with it, and they are. They&#8217;re working now to make it so that your old posts using Jetpack&#8217;s subscription module for comment notifications will still work, and your new posts will use Postmatic.</p>
<p>I had a pretty thorough conversation with Jason and got to see Postmatic in action. For a free plugin especially, the functionality is quite impressive. I tested subscribing to comments, replying by email, and opting into subscriptions, and it is all very smooth. Here&#8217;s a sample reply notification to my email.<span id="more-7197"></span></p>
<div id="attachment_7201" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-7201 size-large" src="http://www.poststat.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/postmatic-email-752x816.gif" alt="postmatic-email" width="627" height="680" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Sample Postmatic notification email</p></div>
<p>Postmatic is already in beta with their API as well. With a little legwork, you can utilize Postmatic for a variety of custom use cases. I know I&#8217;d love to play with it to see if I could create email campaigns for custom post types or multiple lists. They also intend to monetize the plugin via a few avenues &#8212; including ensuring mail delivery and functionality add-ons.</p>
<p>Postmatic &#8212; available for <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/postmatic/">download on WordPress.org</a> &#8212; is and will remain completely free. At some point they&#8217;ll exit beta and they will offer paid delivery of outgoing mail for larger sites. They understand the limitations of sending email through your own server and are using Mailgun to ensure delivery. They also have an extensive &#8212; and for now private &#8212; list of features they aim to introduce to Postmatic.</p>
<p>The product is definitely version 1.0. Advanced list management, and more advanced campaign delivery is still not ready. But I was impressed by how good of a 1.0 Postmatic is, and how much effort Jason and his business parter, Dylan Kuhn, have clearly invested heavily into the product. For instance, subscriber importing is already possible, so you could move to Postmatic for post delivery right away. They <a href="http://gopostmatic.com/setup/">have videos show how to do that and more</a> already available.</p>
<p>They tell me as well that Postmatic is in very early stages. Right now they are working on more advanced template building and other features to help tame your WordPress emails. I think they definitely have other services like <a href="http://jetpack.me">Jetpack&#8217;s</a> Subscriptions and <a title="WYSIJA is now MailPoet" href="http://www.poststat.us/wysija-now-mailpoet/">MailPoet</a> in their sights.</p>
<p>I think WordPress email is ripe for disruption. Imagine, currently, all the ways users can get emails from a website, with little continuity: WordPress itself, Mailchimp or other newsletter provider, Jetpack / WordPress.com, eCommerce solutions, form solutions. Each of these sends email and each has their own quirks, look and feel, and otherwise.</p>
<p>I&#8217;d love to see a service like <a href="http://gopostmatic.com/">Postmatic</a> help tame WordPress email as a whole, and offer a more seamless experience for my website visitors that receive email from me.</p>
<p>In the short term, I doubt any service will be able to do this perfectly. But I think as WordPress sites send more and more mail, continuity in this arena will be very important. I know, for me, as I prepare to enable <a title="The future of Post Status" href="http://www.poststat.us/radical/">club memberships on Post Status</a>, it&#8217;s top of my mind to provide a quality email experience to my members.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 16 Oct 2014 21:51:47 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Brian Krogsgard";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";a:12:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Tue, 04 Nov 2014 10:16:28 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:14:"content-length";s:6:"205334";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Tue, 04 Nov 2014 10:00:15 GMT";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:4:"x-nc";s:11:"HIT lax 249";s:13:"accept-ranges";s:5:"bytes";s:7:"x-cache";s:21:"MISS from newgate.loc";s:3:"via";s:9:"proxy3128";s:10:"connection";s:5:"close";}s:5:"build";s:14:"20130911020210";}