JordanH.net

Thoughts on WordPress 3.0

It’s been in beta for a while (and, yes, I admit, I’ve been using nightly builds on here for a month or so), but WordPress 3.0 is finally out. Now includes some great new support for custom post types, menu management (originally by WooThemes) and the merge between WordPress and WordPress mu.

The new custom post type support could really do well at duplicating Tumblr functionality – although it’s still a bit strange because it’s dependant on at least the theme supporting it, and I’ve not really seen anything thrown about the community yet as to which post types should be considered standard for ‘tumblelog’ themes – obviously this is something that’s pretty important, because if you decide to change your theme and it defines differently-named post types (or misses a type out completely), you’ll ‘lose’ those posts somewhere inside your post table.

I think that WordPress still needs to raise its game in regards to multi-site functionality – it should work out of the box with something akin to ExpressionEngine’s Multiple Site Manager add-on – but it’s understandable that it’s early days. All in all, those who have been using Mu no longer will have to endure the delay between an update’s release and it being available to Mu, and presumably they can now also automatically install updates.

It’s all really great stuff in the build-up to WordCamp UK 2010 – which is taking place in Manchester in the middle of July.

BuddyPress 1.2

Well, it’s been a week or two since BuddyPress 1.2 was released, and so I decided to take another look at the platform. The last time I used BuddyPress was a pre-release version running off trunk, and it was missing quite a few core features. It also required WordPress MU, which is a hassle to upgrade without having to worry about BuddyPress too…

This time round, BuddyPress doesn’t require MU, and you can install it as simple as searching for it in the plugin browser of WordPress. This also simplifies updates as it can be upgraded automatically through the Plugin Manager. bbPress Forums come packaged out of the box within BuddyPress for groups, and the BuddyPress developers have put together a tool for easily adding compatibility for BuddyPress to your existing theme.

Talking of themes, BuddyPress’ new theme is awesome. A lot easier to customize using child themes, and the theme itself has a lot more scope for customization with a large header background image (similar to the WordPress TwentyTen theme) and a slick transparent admin bar.

There’s still a few things I’d like to see put into it – one of the big features it’s currently missing is Photo Galleries – and I’m sure that on the backend, several settings pages could be moved over to templates rather than being hard-coded

I strongly recommend you check it out, and I’m anticipating several big-name WordPress sites possibly integrating some of BuddyPress’ community elements into their themes soon.

P.S. If any BuddyPress developers happen to drop by, please could you get this filter added into the bp-groups package?

Announcing the Awesome Contact Form…

For the last week or so, I’ve been buried away working on a secret project. Today, it’s been approved on the CodeCanyon Marketplace and I hope that the hard work has paid off…

Introducing the Awesome Contact Form – it’s a class-based, PHP contact form which is pipsqueak-easy to setup and comes with a ton of features – including sending an auto-response to the sender, two anti-bot measures (a CAPTCHA and a human-verification question), field filters and custom error  messages. You can also set a success message or use your own. It’s built for customization and integration, and doesn’t force you to stick to the default fields or make you edit the core code to make it work how you’d like to.

And on top of all this, the script comes with an extensive user guide, covering the installation, every configurable option with examples, and tutorials on how to get the most out of your script.

So what are you waiting for? You can get a copy today, it’s only $8 from CodeCanyon

Jordan

PHP Frameworks

It’s over a month since I last wrote on my blog, but to be perfectly honest I don’t have a clue what to write about. Ideas are welcome (:

I’ve known PHP for a good couple of years now (about 3 I think). I’ve built (and scrapped) many PHP scripts I have written along the way, and the code in it has been rather un-maintainable. Gradually, I’ve moved onto splitting my code logic from my html, using templates to change layouts and I even went as far as to create my own database abstraction class, well what I could put together anyway.

But the code is still confusing to look at when I come to modify something or add a feature somewhere, so I decided to take a look at frameworks. There are tons out there… Cake, CodeIgnighter, Symfony and Zend, and I’ve tried Cake to no avail in the past, so which one would be right for me?

On some good advice I’m going to give Zend Framework a try. After all, it’s kind of made by the people who made PHP itself, so I don’t think I can go far wrong. The other plus to it is that you can pick and choose between the components you want, and the components you don’t, and it seems pretty straightforward that you can implement your own components too. (I’ve yet to work out how to do this!)

I think I’ll see how it goes, I’m hoping I get the hang of it because using a framework will help me keep my code easy to maintain in the future, but I still want the level of control over my code as I do when coding my own stuff at the moment.

Thinking Outside the Box

WordPress Themes have been around for a long while, but until very recently, many themes have been simple blog layouts and an extra page template here and there. However, there has been an increasing trend, arguably started by premium themes, where nifty uses of WP’s functions have allowed for unique features and more in themes.

Custom Loops

Custom Loops is probably the most significant of these changes. By letting the user put all their testimonials in one category, you could hide them from the main post display, then run a custom loop somewhere else on the page to display just the testimonials.

An easy way of doing this would be to run the query_posts function choosing only posts from one category, or even pulling a single, random post. Then run a loop like normal, and the post would be displayed.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields are also something which, until recently, seem to have been underused. It’s easy to get a custom field for a post inside your loop, just use the get_post_meta function and you’re good to go.

These have been used for image resizers, video embedding code and even changing the URLs for people reading your RSS feed.

Theme Options Page

Theme Options pages are becoming popular in free themes as well as premium ones now. Aimed towards users who don’t want to dive into their theme’s code, they can help setup a theme and more. These are more complicated pieces of code, but it proves they can be done.

It’s Not A Post!

The whole idea of a post being a couple of paragraphs of text has become less specific, with a post now being considered more of an abstract concept for a piece of content – videos, mini-updates and a lot more. The success of WordPress in part can be attributed to its extremely flexible themes system as that is what has pushed the boundaries of the software and let it become flexible.

This is ultimately the thinking outside of the box which many themes are heading to, and it will be interesting to see what new ideas and techniques are going to be used in the future.

Xbox and Rails

Last night, I met up with Josh, Joseph, Mike, Francis and Sam and we had a great time playing Halo 3 together. Francis’ lack of experience was extremely funny – he only ended up killing people on his team – and we all had some Ice Tea. Considering I haven’t played Halo compulsively – in the time since I got my Xbox I’ve mainly played GTA IV and Battlefield: Bad Company – I did quite well. Our team won a lot of times and I got to the top of the scoreboard once.

Last night, I decided to get round to learning some Ruby on Rails. It’s been something I’ve planned for ages, and since I’ve got a week off now I thought I’d see about learning it. I got InstantRails and installed it on my computer and followed a myriad of tutorials to get “Hello, World!” up on my screen. Gonna see if I can make an app by the end of the week, so far I’ve got about 5 different “Test” apps with no apparrent way to delete them. Help? (:

Lifestreaming

Well, here’s my first attempt at lifestreaming. I coded it this evening in PHP and it pulls RSS feeds from twitter/flickr/my blog. I’ll be posting up a tutorial on JordanHatch.co.uk soon on how I did it.

There’s some styling I need to do with it, but other than that I think it’s pretty extendable. What do you think?

WordPress 2.5

I reckon this is the most controversial WordPress release to date. With a complete overhaul of the Admin CP, especially the write page. Tbh, I kinda like it, although the Editor seems a little slow. The new logo is rather nice too. Butfor those who aren’t so keen, check out Fluency Admin by DeanJRobson. It’s a bit like WP-Tiger but for WP 2.5.

Tony Scott has suggested the idea of having a WordCamp in the UK. There’s been a lot of debate on his blog about suggesting locations, with many opting for London, but just as many (including me) opting for somewhere a bit more up north! When we do have a WordCamp though, I certainly will be attending!

I’ve eventually got round to setting up Twitter. I’ll add a link in the sidebar to my Twitter page. Got a bit peeved though when I found out that T-Mobile have blocked Twitter in the UK. Not much of a problem though, as I’m changing my phone and provider next month. T-Mobile have done nothing good for me, and I’m switching to O2. They’ve got an offer for an LG Viewty free on a £30 a month contract. IMO, the Viewty is better than the iPhone.

That seems to be quite a long blog post. Maybe it’s because of the smaller editor text size in 2.5? That’s all for now!