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Press This with Aaron Brazell

Joost de Valk — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:58:20 +0000

Last nights Press This featured a very pleasant conversation with Aaron Brazell, also known as Technosailor, the author of the upcoming WordPress Bible. We discussed a lot of things, as usual, and as I promised in the comments on my previous Press This update, I've kept more notes so I can do this post and give you all the links to the stuff we talked about!

We talked about which area's of WordPress are under utilized according to Aaron, and he mentioned an area that is dear to my heart as well: the widget functionality that was introduced in 2.8. WP Engineer has a great post on how to build widgets 2.8 style, but if you're a TextMate user, like both Aaron and myself, you should really check out both my TextMate bundle for WordPress and Mark Jaquith's TextMate WordPress widget snippet.

Then we talked briefly about BackPress, which is the attempt to normalise all the code that is shared between BBPress and WordPress into one library of functions and classes that can be used separately as well. Aaron mentioned using it for some non WordPress projects and I've done the same.

We also ranted together on WordPress security, mainly because Aaron did a post on Technosailor with the title WordPress Security and How I’m Going to Take All Your Money. He explained his point: the people who know how to fix this stuff have jobs, they usually make their living building WordPress sites, we don't have the time to fix your blog, so please please upgrade, and if you do get hacked, and it's your dumb fault, we will charge you a lot of money for it.

When asked about his book signing tour it turns out that WordPress authors don't get flown around the world yet to promote their books, which probably has something to do with the WordCamp's being quite local and cheap to go to. I did mention that Aaron should actually be at WordCampNL, where I'll be speaking too October 31st, and he seemed eager to come but probably not this year...

There was a lot more that I'm not going to type out, you'll just have to listen to the show!

Make sure to subscribe to Press This by using the appropriate subscribe button on the Press This page, or tune in live on webmasterradio.fm each tuesday at 2 PM Pacific, 5 PM Eastern, 10 PM GMT, so you can join in the chat! Next week I'll be talking to my buddy Todd Garland of BuySellAds about how to monetize your blog!

Press This with Aaron Brazell is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Updates to the WordPress TextMate bundle

Joost de Valk — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:09:06 +0000

With all the new API enhancements in the last few versions of WordPress, I thought it was time to give my WordPress Textmate bundle an update, as I first released it exactly a year ago. Here are the things I've added:

Added 'esc' tab-expansion: with the help of Mark Jaquith's great article Escaping API updates for WordPress 2.8, typing esc and then pressing tab now brings up a menu with options to choose the proper escaping function.
Localization shortcuts, Alt-L now wraps the selected text in a _e(''); function, that translates and outputs the selected text, while Shift-Alt-L wraps it in a __(''); function, which returns the selection.
A new widget-tab expansion, which works like this:
Click here to view the embedded video.
A tab completion function with the new body_class(); function, for its use, read this great article by Nathan Rice: WordPress 2.8 and the body_class() Function.
A author-tab expansion, with the new the_author_meta function, with some help from my own PHP Cross Reference and this article: Displaying Author Meta Information in WordPress 2.8
All functions that are prefixable with get_, like bloginfo and most functions above, now start with that. author->tab expands to get_the_author_meta with the chosen variable, but pressing space or delete immediately removes the get_ part. Neat huh?
A readme.txt template, including the new changelogs, just type readme->tab in a new file, this snippet uses some shell variables, be sure to enter these in TextMate for quick use.
A plugin template, open a new file, type plugin and press tab, and you'll get the option of either adding just the "normal" plugin header, or one with the GPL embedded.
blog->tab now first ask you whether you want general info or RSS info, and the expands into a menu with all the options for each.
You should also try the $post, $comment, $cat, wpdb and row tab expansions, they've been slightly updated and totally kick ass.

Shell variables

Don't forget to set the following shell variables in the TextMate config, which you can find under Advanced -> Shell Variables:

I'm very interested in hearing what you would like to see in this WordPress Texmate Bundle, so please leave your requests in the comments!

Updates to the WordPress TextMate bundle is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

WordPress Goodies

Joost de Valk — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:50:02 +0000

A small update to say I've fixed one plugin and added another resource for WordPress fanatics. First of all, I used to think that with the release of WordPress 2.3 and 2.5, the need for my Permalink Redirect plugin had gone away. However, I noticed that some friends of mine had loads of indexed URL's on their WordPress blogs with crap in it. Stuff like ?q=ek at the end of a page has no use, of course... So I've resurrected my Permalink Redirect plugin, and it now 301 redirects all that stuff out.

The other goodie is that I've released my WordPress Bundle for Textmate, based on an older version by Brett Terpstra, which could help make your WordPress development a lot easier!

WordPress Goodies is a post by Joost de Valk on Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!