Wordpress News & Articles

WordPress (news, site) made a small announcement today regarding whether or not the GPL applies to themes. 

WordPress refers to the GPL as their Bill of Rights, but we like to think of it as a free software license. The GPL is a popular licence that grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition, and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved--even when the work is changed or added to.

Matt Mullenweg of WordPress writes, "We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’s license." But just to be double sure, he recently consulted the Software Freedom Law Center for their opinion. Mullenweg's results were summed up on the WordPress blog in one simple line:

"PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required."

Of course, cutting out CSS and JavaScript from WordPress would get kind of hairy and horrible, so the final verdict from the WordPress team is that they will continue to only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible.

In order to recognize and celebrate a few of the folks creating 100% GPL themes as well as providing support and other services around them, WordPress has a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes here.

OK, you can toss WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 1 to the wind. Why? because even though it was released only five days ago, the popular blogging platform has just announced the release of 2.8.1 Beta 2. 

Along with the release comes a side note from the WordPress team which states: "We especially suggest, recommend, and beg that plugin developers test their plugins against beta 2 and let us know of any issues."

The notable bug fixes in Beta 2 include: 

• Translation of role names fixed
• wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
• Upload error messages are now correctly reported
• Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
• Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
• SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
• Switched back to curl as the default transport
• Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload

You can review the full list of tickets fixed here. 

WordPress Baker

“Baker” was named after Chet Baker, an American jazz trumpeter. Accordingly, the new version of WordPress is pret-ty jazzy. The feature that grabs the most attention is arguably the Themes Browser, which allows users to browse, filter and install themes all from the WordPress dashboard. Such a feat no doubt raises the usability bar for many a Web CMS, including Drupal, whose themes are reportedly less than easy to install without a certain level of tech-savviness.

Want it? Download version 2.8.1 Beta 2 here, and check out the changes since Beta 1 here.

Most web content management systems come with a spell checker. Some of them, however, hide the feature away as a little button in a mass of menus. In the rush to publish, it is easy to forget about it. As modern language becomes increasingly mangled and full of jargon, it can be hard for a grammar checker to figure out what you are trying to say.

Take a look at a new tool in the "intelligent" grammar and spell check space. After the Deadline (site) is a smart spell, style and grammar checker that supports the TinyMCE editor and has a WordPress plugin.

For his presentation at the eZ Conference, Victor Sanchez of Hachette Media presented a quick overview of his company's implementation of eZ Flow and eZ Find for Woman's Day Magazine.

Woman's Day got its start in the 1930's, but the venerable magazine is taking on the digital age with an on-line portal. 90% of the site's content is original, and Sanchez reports that the editorial staff at the magazine are pleased with the flexibilty of eZ Flow.

Using dynamic blocks and by tracking clicks on the main page, the editorial staff can move around their content on the fly taking into account what is, and isn't working on the layout. This, in turn, has freed up Sanchez and his department to work on new projects (such as an upcoming recipe finder iPhone app) rather than tweaking templates for the site.

As for searching, Woman's Day uses eZ Find, and has worked out a way to tag and search content in order to run a promotional campaign against certain types of content.

The site integrates Brightcove for video, DART, Moniture, WordPress, Silver Pop and some Typepad for blog content.

Sanchez and his team are gearing up for a site redesign. With the platform already in place, the redesign is a simple matter of gathering together the development requirements.

Wendell Challenger is an "uber bike geek" and a graduate-level science student studying topics related to evolution. He's also one of the volunteer writers and photographers for Momentum Magazine, a free bi-monthly publication for urban cyclists available in twenty cities in the US and Canada.

When it was decided to build Momentum's, um, momentum, by bringing its free content onto the Web, Challenger took on the project. Free and open source seemed a no-brainer between his scientific background and the free, community nature of the magazine. At Open Web Vancouver 2009 (news, site) he shared his experience.

Back in December 2007, Six Apart announced that the Movable Type (MT) blogging system was going open source. The move was greeted with enthusiasm, but the momentum never really seemed to build from that point. Now a group of ex-Six Apart staff and other MT enthusiasts have taken matters -- and the code -- into their own hands. Say hello to Open Melody. Let's have a look.

Though WordPress 2.8 was just released, the team behind the ever-popular Web Content Management System has already thrown down another hand on the table. Over the weekend, the WordPress development blog announced that work on the first maintenance release of 2.8 has started. But you don’t have to wait for it.

WordPress 2.8.1 beta is already available for download, and addresses several hiccups. Notable issues that’ve been fixed in beta 1 include:

• Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
• Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
• The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
• A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
• Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.
• If you would like to automatically upgrade from 2.8 to 2.8.1 Beta 1, follow these instructions. Thanks for testing WordPress.

Shaking and Baking the Web CMS World

In case you’ve been living under a rock and totally missed the WordPress 2.8 release, we've got a wee bit of background information for you:

“Baker” was released earlier this month and heavily focuses on the visual and usability side of things, specifically themes and widgets. The feature that grabs the most attention is arguably the Themes Browser, which allows users to browse, filter and install themes all from the WordPress dashboard. Such a feat no doubt raises the usability bar for many a Web CMS, including Drupal, whose themes are reportedly less than easy to install without a certain level of tech-savviness. 

Download it

In total, 2.8.1 includes 21 bug fixes (check the full list of bug fixes here), which isn't half bad for a beta. You can download the new version here, and instructions for automatic upgrade can be found here. 

What ho! Is that a new version of WordPress (news, site)  we spy?

The answer is yes. But of course, you probably knew already; WordPress 2.8 was released for immediate download toward the end of last week. Just like most seasoned blogging platform fans, we’ve come to expect big things from the system. This time, the newest version not only fits the usual bill, it also presents some pretty stiff competition for other platforms like Drupal.

When Palm’s Pre phone was finally unveiled at January’s Consumer Electronic Association’s (CEA) bash earlier this year, everyone knew it was going to create a stir.

With it, Palm introduced some very cool hardware and a new operating system that looks like it will be Palm's platform for mobile devices for the foreseeable future: webOS.

Now, with the phone on general release, Alex King of Crowd Favorite, a prodigious developer of WordPress (news, site) plug-ins, has released a new edition of his WordPress Mobile Edition plug-in that will allow Pre users with WordPress blogs to update and edit the blogs using Pre.

Apart from the added support for the webOS operating system -- a Linux-based platform which leverages web standards for development – there are also a couple of other updates.

For one, it fixes a CSS bug that was referencing a non-existent image. For another it includes a new version of Carrington Mobile, the content management system theme framework for WordPress. This also includes updated README files and version 2.3 of the core Carrington framework.

If you have a Pre and a WordPress blog you can download the plug-in from Alex King’s WordPress plug-ins page.

Remember when WordPress (news, site) was like, Hey guys! Check out my new multilingual support, because on top of a being *the* most popular blogging platform in all the land, I’m also on the way to being a complete content management cure-all!

Ok, WordPress didn’t actually say that. But the team behind WPML, the mega-plugin for multilingual functionality within Wordpress, no doubt has intentions along those lines. Back with more finesse to impress, OnTheGoSystems has released what they’re calling a “major update” to WPML, which reportedly integrates human translation services.

As nearly every article we publish on the topic attests, there is no best CMS -- there's only best fit given the context, if that. At the recent DrupalCamp in Helsinki Exove, a Finnish technical consulting company focused on open source solutions, presented their take on how to choose the best CMS given the client's project context.

They looked at 4 web content management systems: Drupal, WordPress, eZ Publish and CMS Made Simple.

Given the context, it's no surprise that their point of reference was Drupal. But what convinced us to mention the presentation was their concise yet useful take on how the 4 products differed and in what circumstances they encouraged the use of one versus another. Let's have a look.

Welcome to another installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next 30 days.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact for your project for updates.

A market research company is currently interviewing developers about the adoption of various technologies, particularly in open source circles. If you are:

• Programming professionally with open source tools, for revenue-producing work (that is, not inside-the-company-only apps)
• Regularly using Drupal, Joomla, SugarCRM, WordPress or phpBB
• In the U.S. or Canada
• Willing to answer some questions (both online and, ideally, by phone)

Head here to sign up.

Your information will be kept entirely confidential. Participants will be sent a summary of the results in early summer, and those who are interviewed by phone will receive a $25 Amazon gift certificate as a thank you for their time.

While perhaps wearing their very best “if you can’t beat them, join them” face, Six Apart (news, site) recently announced a handful of new services for WordPress users.

The shocking news was made public at this year’s WordCamp Mid-Atlantic—WordPress’ annual conference for the platform’s biggest fans—where, strangely enough, Six Apart co-founder Anil Dash delivered the keynote address.

If all of this sounds a little strange to you, you’re not alone. The ability to dip hands into two of the biggest cookie jars at once has got a number of bloggers scratching their heads. Six Apart defends their decision from a considerate angle: “we love making the Web better and more connected, and we want to help all publishers succeed, regardless of what tools they use. We believe in the power of blogging, and that's why we've got a whole bunch of powerful services available for WordPress users,” their site states.

Does this mean major competition for WordPress? Probably not. Despite Six Apart's efforts, WordPress has remained the blogging platform of choice for quite some time; however, the offerings will do their part in broadening the Six Apart audience, which certainly doesn't hurt. The new tools include TypePad AntiSpam, Six Apart Media, TypePad Connect and Blogs.com, and more information on them can be found here.

Calling all WordPress fanboys and fangirls! The team behind the infamous publishing platform needs your help. Aiming for another release as popular as WordPress 2.7, the brains behind the operation recently made a call for moderators and participants to join the testing program. The chosen few will tinker with different features and functions, and the reported findings will be taken into account for the improved usability of future versions.

Moderators: WordPress is looking specifically for moderators who have professional experience conducting usability tests (design agencies, software companies, usability consulting firms, etc.).

Participants: The regular Joe. In some cases WordPress will target specific behavior, like users who upload large video files. In others, they’ll be looking for users with widgets in their sidebar, users with more than one author on their blog, etc.

If you’re interested, check out the post here. WordPress is accepting moderators immediately, and is in the process of getting the registration survey ready for participants.