Matt: Menu Mind Games

Author William Poundstone Dissects the Marketing Tricks Built Into Balthazar’s Menu, “how something as simple as typography can drive you toward or away from that $39 steak.” I wish typography was that simple.

Matt: Fireside Chat

In New York last month I did a fireside chat with Liz Danzico at the School of Visual Arts which is now available online. The video features myself, Liz Danzico, and the back of Jason Santa Maria’s head.

Matt: Veggies are People Too

Another Challenge for Ethical Eating – Plants Want to Live, Too in NY Times. I eat lots of beef and BBQ because I heard cows have a big carbon impact.

Matt: Christmas Site Updates

First off, Merry Christmas everybody! I’ve been doing some tweaking here around ma.tt. The biggest thing you’ll notice is that I’ve imported about 12,000 photos from my old Gallery-powered gallery, which was broken since I upgraded to PHP5, into core WordPress, and you can see them under this category. I even managed to bring over people tags and comments from the proprietary system I had written. I feel so much safer now that all this data is in WordPress, I know it’ll still work in 10 years. I might have to change how “random” works, though, to exclude the really old photos, because they can be fairly embarrassing.

Matt: Everything is a Project

Everything is a project, even this, by Scott Berkun.

bbPress: 2009-12-23 Meetup

What, just because it’s two days before Christmas we can’t rock the bbPress? In summary: anonymous comments from filosofo and email from photomatt (me) on deck, bug fixes to make things sing, PeteMall will be directly committing fixes, and hajii will be bug gardening.

Meetup log after the jump:

[13:01] <photomatt> <meetup>
[13:02] <photomatt> merry christmas everyone
[13:02] <filosofo> merry Christmas, photomatt
[13:02] <photomatt> what is everyone up to these holidays?
[13:03] <hajii> workin
[13:03] <filosofo> Visiting the in-laws
[13:03] <filosofo> photomatt, didn’t you write bbPress over Christmas? If I’m remembering correctly.
[13:04] <photomatt> yep, 4 years ago?
[13:04] <photomatt> 5?
[13:04] <photomatt> I was young and foolish
[13:05] <hajii> young-ER
[13:05] <photomatt> ha
[13:05] <hajii> anything on the agenda this week?
[13:06] <photomatt> I cut my teeth yesterday, silly fix
[13:06] <photomatt> some error notification stuff with 5.3
[13:07] <photomatt> so now you don’t see a page of white errors when trying to install
[13:07] <photomatt> but on the bright side I got my bbpress env all up and kicking
[13:08] <filosofo> So what’s the roadmap for bbPress development? How can we get things moving?
[13:09] <filosofo> For example, should we start tackling the conversion to wp canonical plugin?
[13:09] <photomatt> my todo for the holiday is 1 thing: email notification
[13:10] <filosofo> There’s a plugin already for that, right?
[13:10] <filosofo> Can you just roll in the code?
[13:10] <westi|gone> howdy all
[13:11] * westi|gone is now known as westi
[13:11] <filosofo> hello westi
[13:11] <photomatt> filosofo: buddypress has a pretty good integration method already
[13:11] <photomatt> filosofo: do you have a fav plugin for it? could just roll in code
[13:11] <westi> photomatt: did you see my note regarding your first 5.3 related change – I think you might have broken the PHP4 compat of the code before you had the right error hiding
[13:12] <filosofo> photomatt, I haven’t used email notification on bbPress, I just know of the plugin[s]‘ existence.
[13:13] <hajii> What is 5.3, the PHP Version 5.3 where people where getting warnings?
[13:13] <hajii> -h
[13:13] <westi> hajii: yes PHP 5.3
[13:13] <photomatt> westi: yes, the glotpress and backpress changes?
[13:13] <photomatt> I shall fix those
[13:13] <westi> photomatt: yes those
[13:14] <hajii> Can I propose a plan of attack?
[13:14] <westi> my tentacles don’t stretch far enough to revert them
[13:14] <filosofo> photomatt, what are your thoughts about buddyPress / bbPress integration? Are you thinking of doing that instead of making bbPress a canonical plugin?
[13:14] <photomatt> they’re not mutually exclusive
[13:15] <photomatt> have you tried out the buddypress integration? I didn’t realize it had gotten as good as it has
[13:16] <filosofo> What makes it different from a non-BuddyPress WP/bbPress integration?
[13:16] <photomatt> they basically embed/bundle the whole thing
[13:19] <photomatt> I’m pretty chill about 1.1 specifically, I think it can be a feature or two, and a cleanup of trac
[13:19] <PeteMall> ok I’m late
[13:19] <photomatt> I guess I’m a little scared of the plugin-thing so I’m procrastinating
[13:19] <hajii> I vote no new features, fix what is included first
[13:19] <hajii> maybe it’s 1.0.4 (or 3 or whatever we’re at)
[13:20] <hajii> hpguru opened a bunch of trac tickets recently pointing out things that are included that just don’t work correctly
[13:20] <filosofo> I was thinking bbPress as plugin integration would mean, e.g., using WP custom post types, or the like, instead of bbPress’s separate table structure.
[13:20] <filosofo> Or maybe like P2
[13:21] <filosofo> bbPress "posts" as WP comments on "forum" WP posts
[13:22] <photomatt> hajii: links? which do you think are the most important?
[13:23] <photomatt> I’m down with "no new features before bugs" in principle
[13:23] <PeteMall> photomatt: r u the only one committing to trac now?
[13:23] <PeteMall> I’m gonna work on a few tickets this week
[13:24] <PeteMall> christmas shutdown is good for open source projects
[13:24] <photomatt> yep
[13:24] <photomatt> if you’ve got some stuff you want to knock out I can give you SVN access too
[13:24] <photomatt> it’s easy peasy right now
[13:24] <PeteMall> that would be nice
[13:25] <filosofo> Regarding bbPress / WP integration, it would be nice to be able to use WP template functions for bbPress.
[13:25] <PeteMall> photomatt: u manage mullenweg.com right?
[13:25] <filosofo> I don’t think you can do that with the buddyPress stuff, right?
[13:25] * Salt is now known as Salt|afk
[13:25] <photomatt> yep
[13:25] <PeteMall> pm
[13:26] <hajii> for the record, I think the "
[13:26] * Thomas_Clausen (n=Ejer@1010ds1-rdo.0.fullrate.dk) has joined #bbpress
[13:26] <hajii> feature poll" was a bad idea.
[13:26] <hajii> open a can of worms
[13:26] <hajii> bug free == feature
[13:27] <filosofo> hajii, asking for suggestions isn’t the same as taking them
[13:27] <photomatt> exactly
[13:27] <photomatt> and perhaps we’re religious on a few things, I’m pretty anti-bbcode, for example
[13:27] <hajii> that’s true. But it’s also demoralizing to some people to give feedback and then never see it go anywhere
[13:27] <PeteMall> lol
[13:27] <hajii> not me, for example
[13:28] <hajii> but, people will EXPECT after submitting their suggestion in a feature poll
[13:28] <PeteMall> so whats the long term plan wrt to close wp integration as filosofo has been talking about
[13:28] <photomatt> hajii: I tried to make it clear it was feedback-oriented, not necessarily a edict
[13:28] <filosofo> hajii, same thing with http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/
[13:28] <photomatt> speaking of that though, I was really surprised by "anonymous posting"
[13:29] <photomatt> what exactly does that mean?
[13:29] <filosofo> you don’t have to log in, like wp comments
[13:29] <photomatt> I mean I know, but I don’t understand the why I guess
[13:29] <hajii> some people feel that asking people to log in is a barrier to participation
[13:29] <filosofo> why do you see it as different from WP comments?
[13:30] <hajii> some people feel facebook connect will also remove a barrier to participation
[13:30] <filosofo> You don’t require commenters to log into ma.tt to comment, for example
[13:30] <PeteMall> alter egos of forum members
[13:30] <photomatt> interesting — that wouldn’t be too hard
[13:30] <photomatt> we’ll need better anti-spam and moderation though
[13:30] <filosofo> I have a bbPress plugin for "anonymous comments" that’s 98% done
[13:30] <hajii> that is/was a plugin as well, anonymous posting
[13:31] <photomatt> filosofo: could you put it as a patch on trac?
[13:31] <filosofo> sure
[13:31] <hajii> better moderation (forum specific) is the oldest ticket on trac, I think
[13:31] <hajii> one of the two oldest anyway
[13:31] <photomatt> hajii: I’m a big believer in moderation — it’s my fav feature in WP
[13:34] <photomatt> did my connection drop?
[13:34] <filosofo> photomatt, for future reference, what’s the best way to get your attention for a trac ticket?
02[13:34] * tewwy_ (n=tychay@208.80.69.102) Quit
[13:35] <filosofo> since you’re the committer
[13:35] <PeteMall> everyone got quiet =)
[13:35] <photomatt> filosofo: skype, actually
[13:35] <photomatt> saxmatt02 is me on skype
[13:36] <filosofo> So you don’t mind if I ping you about a patch on skype?
[13:36] <photomatt> for bbpress, not at all
[13:36] <filosofo> ok, cool
[13:38] <PeteMall> anything else on the agenda for today?
[13:38] <photomatt> so it sounds like we have email notif and filosofo’s anon comments on deck
[13:38] <photomatt> hajii and PeteMall are into bugs, and we’ll go through trac
[13:39] <hajii> do you want me to do anything specific for those bugs in trac that currently exist?
[13:39] <photomatt> PeteMall has asked for direct SVN access
[13:39] <Thomas_Clausen> @PeteMall I’ll like to throw something in there!
[13:40] <Thomas_Clausen> Will porting posibilities from other forumsoftware be a concern in future releases of bbPress?
[13:40] <photomatt> PeteMall: the main rule is to put everything possible through trac, post patches there, get feedback and review
[13:40] <PeteMall> yup
[13:41] <photomatt> but in trunk we can be loosey goosey a little bit, the beautiful thing about SVN is it’s easy to roll back
[13:41] <photomatt> oh! and coding style
[13:41] <photomatt> http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Coding_Standards
[13:41] <PeteMall> I’ve been meaning to talk about that
[13:42] <PeteMall> stick to the coding standards… remember – code is poetry
[13:42] <hajii> Wait, what was the slogan from 2weeks ago? We suck a little less with each release?
[13:43] <filosofo> Not sucking is the goal of all great poets.
[13:43] <photomatt>
[13:44] <photomatt> hajii: in trac I’d say most helpful is verifying bugs
[13:44] <photomatt> testing patches
[13:45] <photomatt> setting priorities and milestones
[13:45] <photomatt> being nice to new people that drop by, helping mentor them through getting a patch or idea in the right place
[13:46] <photomatt> generally what we call bug gardening in WP, though that is a weird term
[13:46] <photomatt> when you think about it
[13:47] <hajii> tending to the bugs, lovingly
[13:47] <PeteMall> yea… helping them grow. nurturing
[13:47] <photomatt> I like tummelling
[13:47] <photomatt> http://indexmb.com/tummling-have-you-heard-of-it/
[13:47] <hajii> like the dude who raised the moths in the silence of the lambs, kept them warm, fed them, gave them love
[13:48] <hajii> Death’s Head Moth
[13:48] <hajii>
[13:49] <filosofo> well, on that note…
[13:50] <photomatt> haha yes
[13:50] <hajii> heh
[13:50] <photomatt> that’s a good ending point, unless someone else has anything they want to raise
[13:50] <hajii> nope, I will focux on bugs
[13:50] <hajii> in trac
[13:50] * Guest3427 is now known as Nightgunner5
[13:51] <photomatt> well thank you everybody
[13:51] <PeteMall> &lt;/meetup
[13:51] <PeteMall>
[13:52] <PeteMall> missed the other side
[13:52] <photomatt> man the way mirc stores logs is annoying
[13:52] <PeteMall> &lt;&#47meetup&gt;

Matt: Permanently Deleted

“The WordPress people, as good as they are, don’t seem to ken why this ‘convenient’ and possibly life-saving feature creates repercussions and consequences. Like the Senate, it’s all a game to them.” Permanently Deleted : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits. Hat tip: Joe Clark.

Matt: Stealth Startups

Stealth Startups, Get Over Yourselves: Nobody Cares About Your Secrets on TechCrunch.

WordPress 2.9, oh so fine

I want to make you mine, all the time… oh wait. Hello. I’m here on behalf of the entire WordPress development team and community to announce the immediate availability of WordPress version 2.9 “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae (whom we’ve added to our Last.fm WP release station). You can upgrade easily from your Dashboard by going to Tools > Upgrade, or you can download from WordPress.org. And of course, it wouldn’t be a major release without a short video summarizing some of the cool things about the new version:

The coolest new stuff from a user point of view is:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

2.9 provides the smoothest ride yet because of a number of improvements under the hood and more subtle improvements you’ll begin to appreciate once you’ve been around the block a few times. Here’s just a sampling:

• We now have rel=canonical support for better SEO.
• There is automatic database optimization support, which you can enable in your wp-config.php file by adding define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);.
• Themes can register “post thumbnails” which allow them to attach an image to the post, especially useful for magazine-style themes.
• A new commentmeta table that allows arbitrary key/value pairs to be attached to comments, just like posts, so you can now expand greatly what you can do in the comment framework.
• Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)
• You can set custom theme directories, so a plugin can register a theme to be bundled with it or you can have multiple shared theme directories on your server.
• We’ve upgraded TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing and Simplepie.
• Sidebars can now have descriptions so it’s more obvious what and where they do what they do.
• Specify category templates not just by ID, like before, but by slug, which will make it easier for theme developers to do custom things with categories — like post types!
• Registration and profiles are now extensible to allow you to collect things more easily, like a user’s Twitter account or any other fields you can imagine.
• The XML-RPC API has been extended to allow changing the user registration option. We fixed some Atom API attachment issues.
• Create custom galleries with the new include and exclude attributes that allow you to pull attachments from any post, not just the current one.
• When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to that line after you save. (Thank goodness!!!)
• The Press This bookmarklet has been improved and is faster than ever; give it a try for on-the-fly blogging from wherever you are on the internet.
• Custom taxonomies are now included in the WXR export file and imported correctly.
• Better hooks and filters for excerpts, smilies, HTTP requests, user profiles, author links, taxonomies, SSL support, tag clouds, query_posts and WP_Query

All of this and more is reflected in the over 500 tickets, bugs, and enhancements that WP developers in this release cycle.

This release included code from over 140 contributors, here’s everyone we were able to identify: aaroncampbell (Aaron Campbell), abackstrom (Adam Backstrom), aldenta (John Ford), alexkingorg (Alex King), [amilanov], antonylesuisse (Antony Lesuisse), apeatling (Andy Peatling), apokalyptik (Demitrious Kelly), arena (André Renaut), batmoo (Mohammad Jangda), Ben Dunkle, BenBE1987, Benjamin Flesch, bookchiq (Sarah Lewis), brianwhite, c0nstruct, caesarsgrunt (Caesar Schinas), CalebKniffen (Caleb Kniffen), chrisbliss18, chrisscott (Chris Scott), christoph179, coffee2code (Scott Reilly), [cross country flight], Curioso, davecpage (Dave Page), dcole07 (Dan Cole), dd32 (Dion Hulse), demetris (Δημήτρης Κίκιζας), Denis-de-Bernardy, dj-wp, dwright, eddieringle (Eddie Ringle), error (Michael Hampton), ewestp, fabifott, filosofo (Austin Matzko), greenshady (Justin Tadlock), gsnedders/link92 (Geoffrey Sneddon), hailin (Hailin Wu), hakre, hanilovesme, Harald Nesland, harrym, holizz (Tom Adams), ikonst, jacobsantos (Jacob Santos), janeforshort (Jane Wells), jamescollins (James Collins), jdub (Jeff Waugh), jeff_ (Jean-François “Jeff” VIAL), jeremyclarke (Jeremy Clarke), JeremyVisser (Jeremy Visser), jikamens, jmulley, Joern_W, johanee (Johan Eenfeldt), johnbillion (John Blackbourn), johnjamesjacoby (John James Jacoby), johnjosephbachir (John Joseph Bachir), JonathanRogers, joostdevalk (Joost de Valk), Jose Carlos Norte, josephscott (Joseph Scott), junsuijin, kevinB (Kevin Behrens), kometbomb, lilyfan (IKEDA Yuriko), [lostinlafayette], madhyde, MattyRob, mdawaffe (Michael Adams), Mittineague, miqrogroove, morfiusx, mrmist (David McFarlane), mtdewvirus (Nick Momrik), mysz, nacin (Andrew Nacin), nanochrome, nao (Naoko McCracken), nathanrice (Nathan Rice), nbachiyski (Николай Бачийски), niallkennedy (Niall Kennedy), nickohrn (Nick Ohrn), ninjaWR (Ryan Murphy), noel (Noël Jackson), Otto42 (Samuel Wood), pairg, peaceablewhale (Franklin Tse), prettyboymp (Michael Pretty), ProDevStudio, ramiy, redsweater (Daniel Jalkut), ruslany, sambauers (Sam Bauers), scribu, Sewar, Simek, simonwheatley (Simon Wheatley), sirzooro (Daniel Frużyński), sivel (Matt Martz), skeltoac (Andy Skelton), snakefoot, stephanreiter (Stephan Reiter), strider72 (Stephen Rider), taco1991, takayukister (Takayuki Miyoshi), tellyworth, tenpura, usermrpapa, utkarsh, Viper007Bond, vladimir_kolesnikov (Vladimir Kolesnikov), VoxPelli (Pelle Wessman), [voyou1], wahgnube, waltervos, westonruter (Weston Ruter), wnorris (Will Norris), xenlab (Eric Marden), yoavf (Yoav Farhi). Wowza!

2.9 has been an exciting development cycle, and I must say it has whetted our appetite for 3.0, which is coming next (probably this spring) and will include at the very least the merge of MU with the WordPress core, and a new default theme. We can’t wait to start working on it. But first, some Carmen McRae tunes and a beer. Join us!

(After you upgrade, of course!)

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season.

2.9 Release Candidate 1

We’re at that exciting point in WordPress development where the dev team feels like version 2.9 is complete and ready for the world.

If you’ve been waiting for your moment to pitch in, it’s now. First we need tech savvy testers to upgrade their blogs and kick the tires, make sure everything is rolling like you expect it to. Here’s a list of all the fun and geeky new stuff in 2.9 to try out. Second, and more importantly, we need everyone to test out their plugin compatibility.

If you’re a user of plugins, there’s a groovy new compatibility feature on the plugin directory where you can vote on whether a plugin is compatible with a version or not and it’ll get registered in the new plugin compatibility checker. This is as a replacement to the old wiki-based lists we’d do before. To see it in action check out this Akismet plugin page, as you can see 14 people have already registered that it’s compatible with 2.9.

If you’re a plugin author, of course you should update your “Tested up to:” in the readme.txt for your plugin.

If all goes according to plan, WordPress 2.9 will be out before the end of the week. You can download the release candidate here.

For more details on the changes since Beta please review the revision log on Trac, and happy testing!

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