Adventures & experiences in contemporary technology
Work on WordPress 3.1 is in full swing at the moment though I initially though that they were taking a little break after 3.0. From what I can see, many refinements are being made to the multi-blog functionality and behind-the-scenes work is ongoing on the administration screens too.
Another under-the-bonnet change has been to make WordPress less tied to MySQL since the possibility of dropping in support for an alternative such as PostgreSQL is now a reality even if it isn’t part of the default package. For now, it looks as if this is going to be plugin territory rather than default multi-database support though that may become a sensible development in the light of Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL and its sabre rattling with regard to Java patents. So far, the change to WordPress has affected my use of its database engine to power an offline version of my online photo gallery but a quick spot of code editing sorted that issue.
One more obvious alteration is going to be the addition of a WordPress.com style administration bar to the top of all content and administration screens for a user who is logged into the system. It is going to be turned on by default but there will be the option of turning it off for those among who prefer things that way. All that will be needed for this is to add the following line near the top of wp-config.php:
define( “WP_SHOW_ADMIN_BAR”, false);
The chance to see new additions like those above and be ready for is my main reason for following WordPress development. It’s best to be ready than surprised though it has to be said that the blogging or CMS platform is a very polished one these days.
If you’ve been here before, you’ll notice that the first rendition of the new look for this place has been introduced. It is based upon the intention WordPress theme but more work is needed before it looks as tidy as I’d like it. That’ll take a little while and improvements will come gradually but I hope that the new design is pleasing even at this point in time. At the very least, it looks natty to my eyes though there are little bits and pieces that I have ended up leaving behind for now. Even so, it gives me a modern menu at the top of every page so I’m far from disappointed. In any case, I don’t mind doing some extra tinkering.
After having a spin of Fedora’s latest in a Virtualbox virtual machine on my main home PC, I decided to upgrade my Fedora box. First, I needed to battle imperfect Internet speeds to get an ISO image that I could burn to a DVD. Once that was in place, I rebooted the Fedora machine using the DVD and chose the upgrade option to avoid bringing a major upheaval upon myself. You need the full DVD for this because only a full installation is available from Live ISO images and CD’s.
All was graphical easiness and I got back into Fedora again without a hitch. Along with other bits and pieces, MySQL, PHP and Apache are working as before. If there was any glitch, it was with Netbeans 6.8 because the upgrade from the previous version didn’t seem to be a complete as hoped. However, it was nothing that an update of the open source variant of Java and Netbeans itself couldn’t resolve. There may have been untidy poking around before the solution was found but all has been well since then.
My trying out WordPress 3.0 in advance of its final release has brought me errors on the links management page. After a spot of poking around the TRAC, I found that the bug already has been reported and that the cause is an extraneous column in the *_links table called link_category. The change in taxonomy handling over the years seems to have made it redundant so I removed the said column from the database using a command like the following from both the MySQL command line and MySQL Query Browser:
alter table wordpress.wp_links drop link_category;
That seems to have made those errors go away and I hop that their upgrade code takes care of this before WordPress 3.0 is let loose of the general blogging public. Taking out the coding brittleness would do too.
Now that the mobile web is upon us, I have been wondering about making my various web presences more friendly for users of that platform and my interest has been piqued especially by the recent addition of such capability to WordPress.com. With that in mind, I grabbed the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin and set it to work, both on this blog and my outdoors one. Well, the results certainly seem to gain a seal of approval from mobiReady so that’s promising. It comes with a version of the Carrington Mobile theme but you need to pop that into the themes directory on your web server yourself for WordPress’ plugin installation routines won’t do that for you. It could be interesting to see how things go from here and the idea of creating my own theme while using the plugin for redirection honours sounds like a way forward;I have found the place where I can make any changes as needed. Home made variants of the methodology may find a use with my photo gallery and Textpattern sub-sites.
I have been having problems with Firefox being sluggish so I resorted to a Lifehacker tip to see if that helped. It was a matter of opening up the Error Console from the Tols menu and entering the following long line into the command bar and hitting the evaluate button:
Components.classes[“@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1”].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL(“VACUUM”);
It did the track once or twice but its database hoovering claims are on trial as far as I am concerned. Keeping an eye on what’s eating system resources will be on the menu too, especially after seeing what my brief foray with Ubuntu One was doing. A move to Google Chrome cannot be ruled out of the question either.
Being a user of Textpattern, I should have a vested interested in any developments in that venerable web platform. However, the latest release came out at the end of August unbeknownst to me and that’s with an entry on the Dev Blog. Those blog entries come irregularly so that might have been how I missed it but there were other things going on in my life like the installation of new windows in my house and weekends spent in Scotland and Ireland.
Still, the whole release was more low key than, say, a new version of WordPress where many would be shouting how important the upgrade would be and with messages turning up on blog administration screens too. There may be good reason for this given the recent problems experienced by those who fail to keep up with progress. Of course, WordPress is a major target for unwanted attention so it’s best to keep your wits about you. The low key nature of Textpattern might be an asset when it comes to warding off miscreants and its greater compatibility with more technically minded folk may help security too. Saying all of that may be pure speculation but you only have to look at the world of operating systems to see how the idea came into my mind.
A later posting on the Txp blog tells you about the new goodies available in release 4.2.0 but here’s a short selection to whet your appetite: themes for the administration area, multiple sites and new tags. Upgrading proved painless though I did try it out on an offline version of the microsite where I use Textpattern before making a move on its online counterpart. All went smoothly but it’s alway best to look before you leap or a site rebuild might be in order and no one needs that.
I was perusing a recent copy of Linux Format and encountered a feature describing a self-hosted alternative to the likes of Flickr: Gallery. From my quick look, it looks fully featured, offering themes and even shopping cart facilities for those who want to sell their wares. The screenshots on the open-source project’s website look promising but, for a fuller appraisal, I would need to spend some time trying to bend it to my will. Before anyone mentions it, I am aware that WordPress can be used for photoblogging, but this tool seems to take things a bit further. It’s the sort of thing about which I might have wondered, given the pervasiveness of content management systems these days. My own custom-built photo gallery is devoid of a slick back end, hence why Gallery caught my eye, but I’ll continue with it and may even get to adding the needful myself.
Butterfingeredness can happen to anyone and it’s always nice to know to remove words added to custom dictionaries in error. Many of my blog postings have had their spellings checked using a button on the Google Toolbar so I have a vested interest in knowing how to remove any bloomers. Thankfully, they have a useful page telling you exactly what you need to do for Firefox and Internet Explorer. As is often said, you can never be too careful…
While I have been a user of WordPress since late 2006, I only began to start keeping tabs on its development following my hearing news of dramatic changes coming in what became 2.5. Since a pattern developing with bigger changes coming in 2.5 and 2.7 while both 2.6 and 2.8 didn’t add too much in the way of upheaval but rather evolved what was already there. With 2.8, theme and widget management got the once over while there were plenty of other tweaks that polished a well received forbear. The differences between 2.7 and 2.8 are discernible without breaking anything that shouldn’t be broken. In short, I rather like the result.
The reaction to 2.5 was mixed, to say the least, and that in part led to the dramatic changes in 2.7, especially with regard to the administration interface. I admit to having had doubts about these when I first saw them development and there was so much chopping and changing during development that stepping back until things settled down became a necessity. Even adding a ticket to the TRAC was problematical unless you had sight of what was happening behind the scenes because it became too easy to add an invalid ticket.
With the release of 2.8 into the wild, 2.9 is now on the horizon and I am inclined to suspect that we might see bigger changes again. For one thing, there was that interface poll a little while ago and who knows what impact that may have on what comes next. The structure of the administration screens may not alter that much but that still leaves changes to colours and icons with the aim of separating navigation from what else is on there, something that doesn’t trouble me at all. In fact, I don’t see very much wrong with how how things are right now and wonder if there’s any point in making too many changes at all. The forecasted incorporation of WPMU functionality is a bigger change that would mean the end of WordPress MU as a separate entity and would concern me more with the amount of under the bonnet re-engineering that would be needed. Add Google Summer of Code projects to this mix and 2.9 looks as if it could be a step change in the spirit of 2.5 and 2.7, if not in feel. Summer 2009 could be very interesting for WordPress and I only hope that it continues to work for me in the way that it does as we move from version to version.