WordPress is my favorite Content Management System (CMS). Once in a while it helps me make some extra money. Once in a while it helps me look at the problem from a different perspective. But even when it doesn’t, I still enjoy using it for this (and a few other) websites. And I enjoy interacting with the community. I use this category to share bits and pieces which are WordPress related.
WordPress Tavern lists step-by-step instructions on how to add icons from the Awesome Font to your WordPress menus and content. It’s really simple and the result does look better. Here is how my menu looks now:
I don’t really need the icons in the content, but it’s good to know that it is possible.
inMotion Hosting runs the article “WordPress through the ages“, which shows in a number of screenshots how WordPress user interface has changed from version to version. It is a long run indeed, and the one that brings a nostalgic tear to those of us who have been using the system for a while. Just look at how much it has changed, how much it has matured. From this in WordPress 1.0.1:
to this in the latest and the greatest WordPress 3.8:
I don’t think that there is a single item that was left untouched. Main menu has been reorganized a number of times, moved from top to the left, given sub-menu items, icons, and a variety of different fonts and colors. The editor has been through a tonne of transformations, adding the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) feature, icons, HTML preview, media uploader, which is a story of itself, and more. Custom post types are a fresh addition, but even they went through a bit. So did all the other elements – social networks integration, publishing options, categories, SEO, and more. And that’s just the post editing screen. As much or more has happened to the rest of the screens. Being redone in responsive layout, ready for smartphone and tablet screens comes to mind.
All these changes happened for a variety of reasons. Of course, people building WordPress learned better ways, got more feedback, and spent more time on it. But also the Web itself has changed. We are seeing faster networks, more powerful browsers, and richer interfaces.
Which brings me to another point. Pretty much every single time I was involved in building a website or an application, a non-technical client would raise the question of deadlines and phrase it like “When is this going to be finished?”. And every single time I have to explain that applications and websites they are not finite. They are more like kids – once you start, you never stop. It’s an ongoing project, with more and more features, fixes, and improvements. (There are exceptions, of course, but they are just that – exceptions). Most times, it’ll never be done. And one can’t just put everything into a single version, release it and forget about it. Instead, one should make a plan, a roadmap and decide what goes into each version, leaving some space and time for things that were unthoughtful at the time.
WordPress, like may other awesome applications, illustrates this nicely. WordPress 1.0 has been released and has been used by a lot of people. Was it done? No. More changes came in during 1.x, 2.x, and now 3.x version series. Is it done now? No, not by a mile. It is a much better system than it used to be. But there are still gazillion things to be done. And that’s a good thing! I wish such a lengthy (and successful) roadmap to every project.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back and drop that nostalgic tear of days gone by…
The bright new and shiny version – WordPress 3.8 – is available for download. As I mentioned previously, the biggest change is the reworked administration area that now scales well to smaller screens, like those of smartphones and tablets. It’s far from perfect, but at least it works now. I’m sure there will be more changes and improvements in the upcoming versions.
But that’s of course not the only change. The administration area has changed a lot – more contrast, different icons, improved typography, and now even with color schemes. Also, theme preview and management got changed quite a bit. With the new theme management interface, the screenshots are larger, which, unfortunately, makes them blur out a bit until theme developers will update with higher resolution versions.
Switching back from Jetpack Publicize to Social WordPress plugin. Publicize fails to push to Facebook ..
The latest version of Jetpack for WordPress plugin – which packs together several most used plugins and makes sure they all work nicely together – brings in a new one: Jetpack Monitor. Here is a straight forward description from the plugin site:
Jetpack Monitor will keep tabs on your site, and alert you the moment that downtime is detected.
Once activated, one of our servers will start checking your site every five minutes. If it looks like something’s gone awry, we’ll fire off an email notification to the WordPress.com account that Jetpack is connected under.
I think this is brilliant. Every single WordPress site owner I know has at least once looked around for a simple monitoring service that would let him know when the site goes down. There are a few of those around, but all of them are a bit of a hassle to setup – you’ll need to know the terminology and at least have an idea about systems monitoring. With Jetpack Monitor all that is not needed anymore. Simply click the ‘Activate‘ button in the Jetpack settings and you are all done. Beautiful!