Author: Edward Caissie

WordPress Support Technician, Developer, Designer; Chess Enthusiast; Photographer; Guitar player … I am Cais.
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Why Free Plugins

I write plugins for many reasons. Sometimes there is a need; sometimes it’s a Mallory-Everest exercise but every time it is with the full intention of releasing the plugin to the WordPress Extend repository. Currently I have eight plugins freely available and hosted at WordPress, and one more (which is a minor modification of another author’s plugin) hosted at BuyNowShop.com.

Although my schedule has been filled with my WordPress Theme Review Team activities of late, I still make every effort to maintain the plugins in the repository at a “current” level relevant to the current stable release of WordPress itself. I also make every effort to insure the plugins are relatively future-proof so I do not have to drop everything to update them with each new release.

I also work with feedback from end-users to add additional functionality as well. If I feel the new functionality would have widespread appeal then I add it to the plugin’s TO-DO list; if it seems unique or what I expect to be a rarely implemented idea I will suggest the end-user attempt to modify the plugin (sometimes with the necessary code changes as well); or, I may offer to make the modifications for a fee. This of course is also dependent on the end-user’s request and where they want to implement the plugin … I have been known to provide my services pro-bono if the cause is right.

I have received some donations related to my works, both themes and plugins, and I find it to be a great reward. I don’t look at the monetary value; I look at it as a reward of recognition. A donation tells me someone liked one of my plugins (or themes) well enough to express their gratitude with their hard-earned money. A simple thank-you comment or email is great, but I recognize and appreciate the extra efforts it takes to give monies, or other gifts, too.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the people that have made donations, both to myself and to all the other designers and developers that keep the lifeblood of WordPress flowing.

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WordPress 3.1-beta

I usually start much earlier in the beta releases; and, I usually do this at BuyNowShop.com but I decided to step up to the current “nightly build” of WordPress here today as it generally only take a few moments to upgrade from the current stable release.

It’s a very simple process:

  1. Open the /wp-includes/version.php file in core to edit.*
  2. Change line 11 to: $wp_version = '3.1-beta';
  3. Go to your Administration Panel of your WordPress installation.
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “stay updated” link in the bottom-right corner. (Refresh the page if the link is not there.)

That’s it, your done! Congratulations, you are now beta testing!

*N.B.: This is one of the very few and extremely rare instances where I would ever suggest editing a core WordPress file. I do not recommend this for anyone that is not familiar with how to make a correct back-up of their installation; and, how to re-install WordPress if the world falls in on their heads.
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You Could Be WPTRT

How do I get involved with the WordPress Theme Review Team (WPTRT)?
It’s really rather simple. Just follow these steps below.

  1. Subscribe to the Theme Review mailing list.
  2. Make sure you have a WordPress.org username.
  3. Send a message to the mailing list expressing your interest in helping out with Theme Reviews.
  4. A current WPTRT member will contact you (generally via a reply to your message). If you are ready they will assign you a ticket in the Theme trac and you will be on your way to becoming a Theme reviewer.

Of course, there is more to reviewing Themes as part of the WPTRT, the above is just how you get started.

Let’s have a quick look through these steps.

  1. Subscribing to the mailing list gets you involved in one of the main discussion areas of the WPTRT. It is one of the places we discuss ideas about various items that may, or may not, affect how the Theme Review guidelines are interpreted or used when reviewing a submitted Theme.
  2. Your WordPress username is a common focal point for all of your WordPress activities. If you are a Theme author, or a plugin developer, you already have one and this is the one that will be used on the Theme trac system. It could also be the username you log into the WordPress Support forums with although current members generally use their “developer” username.
  3. We need to know you are interested, although you can also log into the #wordpress-themes channel on freenode.net and chat via IRC with one of the theme reviewers as well. The mailing list is generally the more common approach.
  4. We assign the first few tickets to new reviewers just to help with the learning process. Once you have shown you understand the process we’ll make a few changes behind the scenes and you will be able to assign yourself your own tickets in trac and carry on reviewing Themes.

We expect that sometime during this process you have thoroughly familiarized yourself with the Theme Review guidelines as well as a few other relevant pages in the codex. Here are the links to the pages I always recommend reading:

NB: Just in case, I would suggest reading these pages at least once a week, although generally our intent is to not have them change very often.

Also, you should create yourself a test-bed installation; import the Theme Unit Test data (from the link above); and, install the following few very useful plugins:

I also suggest installing a plugin that writes viewable text to ‘wp_footer()‘ for testing as well, if you do not have your own preference you are welcome to download and install my BNS Login plugin.

Now, you might be asking why would I want to join the WPTRT?
There are many reasons and many ways to get involved with the WordPress community. This one will offer you: insight into how the Theme submission process works; the opportunity to influence positive change in the Theme Review guidelines; a wealth of new ideas and code possibilities; and, interactions with some of the best and the brightest current Theme authors involved with the WordPress Themes repository.

N.B.: The above “guest” post was written after a suggestion from Jeff Chandler during the 106th episode of the WordPress Weekly podcast; and was posted by Jeff at the Weblog Tools Collection site.
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Strokes

It’s Friday and another week has passed by without any other posts being made here. I really do like to write. Often times I will have a stroke of genius only to realize it was just a stroke of madness when the idea hit me.

I was going to write a post about lists … seriously?! Lists?!! I must have been mad. No matter how many times I tried to start the grandiose Lists post I could get no further than the second sentence; then, it became unbearably boring, in a psychologically painful manner, to add even a few more characters let alone more words.

It seems a lot of the time I want to sit down and write I often find myself distracted or pulled in another direction … or just simply drawing a blank when the blank screen is staring back at me, as if taunting me to fill the space with anything … gibberish, Jabberwocky excerpts, badly written haikus?!

Are you a writer? blogger? digital philosopher? I still really like that term, digital philosopher, it brings to mind a vision of new-age poets and scribes. Individuals who can bring together words and phrases and bon mots that share an idea, simple message, an epiphany that others will read … and share.

Let your thoughts be genius and your madness creative for in these strokes of writing madness comes the ideas of creative genius.

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Where To Begin …

… that always seems to be the hardest point when I start writing. Especially when I have no real idea where I want to go to. Perhaps the question that should be asked when I am staring at a blank screen is where to end?

An alpha-omega moment when both the beginning and the end are equally and clearly in sight is a writer’s dream as I see it. If I know precisely the opening I want to have and know the exact ending I want to reach then all the rest in the middle should simply fall into place. It’s simply connecting the dots.

Today I knew I wanted to write a post, almost a need to write if you will … it something that just had to be done. Did I know this would be the topic, getting from the beginning of a post to the end of the post and filling in the middle with something other than mindless drivel? Not really, and hopefully it serves more than just filling this digital space with pixels in the shapes of letters and spaces strung together to form words.

This sort of writing, free streaming conscious thoughts, is always interesting in that it can go just about anywhere the fingers want to take it as the thought behind it is minimal for the most part. I simply just type as fast as I can think clearly, as I pointedly say the words clearly in my mind.

Which brings to mind it is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Give it a try, you’ll never know if you don’t.

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Coffee, Tea, or Keurig

I enjoy a good cup of coffee as much as I enjoy a good cup of tea. I also appreciate convenience and quality, too. You may be asking yourself why am I writing this? In a word: Keurig.

What is Keurig?

CHOOSE. BREW. ENJOY.®
It’s how we see the world. It’s how we work. It’s how we relax. It’s how we wake up. It’s how we power down. Welcome to Keurig. For coffee, tea, hot cocoa and iced beverages, the world has discovered Keurig and it’s how you brew. With over 200 varieties to choose from, it’s always easy to find the right one-for you.
from the Keurig.com website

My wife recently put in a great deal of time, energy, and extra hours at her work to help with one of their charity drives. One particular event this time was tea and coffee service brought to everyone’s desk. They used a Tassimo machine to brew the coffee and teas they served. As she was telling me about her day we started talking about the various “coffee machines” that use this “cup” system. That was about a week and a half ago.

After some online research and some personal opinions we started to seriously look at the Keurig brewers. The brewer and K-Cups are competitively priced but the true deciding factor was simply the abundant brands (read: choice of flavors) that support the system.

Friday night we went shopping. It had been a long week and a little retail therapy was in order. We decided on the Cuisinart Brewing System and as fate would have it our old drip coffee maker needed to be replaced after its six years of nearly daily use. The warming element had just recently became exposed, which I only noticed as I was cleaning it for storage. The timing was just right.

Now, it’s time for my morning coffee but I have a serious dilemma: what flavor do I brew next?

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Automattic = dot-wp?

Yesterday this post was made by Matt Mullenweg regarding the recent accreditation of Automattic as a domain registrar.

I think this leads to a real possibility of dot-wp top level domains (TLD)! As I have recently fallen to the little known affliction of IDA I am quite concerned that this may create a unscratchable itch?! Will this create a digital land-rush for .wp domains?

There is also the potential for a dot-blog TLD that may be more appealing to the Internet in general. As it is, for more general details regarding the creation of a new TLD, head over to ICANN and read this article

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Are You Ready?

Do you stockpile posts? Do you have an idea file that you pick and choose from to write just the right post at just the right time? I rarely do, but sometimes an idea just needs to be kept aside for just the right occasion. Hopefully soon a post I wrote will leave the draft status to live as published … and to add to this mystery: expect it to appear on another site.

Normally I post stream of conscious writings here and will likely keep that style. I find it very freeing to just simply write whatever comes to mind. I write. I edit. I write some more. I edit more … sometimes I stumble, sometimes my fingers dance across the keyboard. I still find it completely amazing how well my touch-typing skills have improved over the last few years of blogging, writing, and coding.

Of course, on other sites I often write with a planned idea in mind. Some of these posts are often written over a number of days. Typically I will think of an idea; consider how I want to convey the topic at hand; then, begin writing. I tend to save these posts as a drafts for a day or so but eventually after several re-reads and usually an edit or two more these posts are published as well. Feel free to stop by my other sites to read them.