WordPress.org

We can’t really call Gravatars “globally recognized avatars” unless they’re realistically available to people the world over, and that means making sure everyone who wants to use one has language access. That’s why Gravatar, like every Automattic joint, relies on a fantastic group of international volunteers to translate almost everything we create, ensuring that what we do is globally accessible.

In the past few weeks, we’ve completed the French and Korean translations of en.gravatar.com, bringing the total number of available languages to 43, from Georgian to Norwegian to Bengali.

(If you’ve never heard of Georgian, take a minute to click over — it’s a beautiful script!)

If you visit any of the non-English Gravatar pages, you might still see some content in English — that’s because almost all these pages are works-in-progress. If you’d like to contribute to one of them, or start a translation for a language that’s not currently on the list, we’d love to have you! Just click on “help translate” next to any of the currently available languages, or visit the Gravatar GlotPress page to see exactly what still needs to be done, learn how to become a translator, and add your language to the list.

Alkane is a simple, customizable, and clean theme.

Landscape is a simple and responsive theme, perfect for photography sites.

Newschannel is a pretty versatile theme, that places the emphasis of the home page and archive pages on featured images.

Panels is a panel-based theme theme with custom header, custom background, custom menus, and widgets.

New plugins

Flowplayer 5 for WordPress allows you to show videos with videos with FlowPlayer 5.

HotSpots draws a heat map of mouse clicks overlayed on your webpage allowing you to improve usability by analyzing user behaviour.

Updated plugins

CampTix Event Ticketing is an easy to use and flexible event ticketing plugin.

Facebook makes your site deeply social by integrating functionality from Facebook.

HyperDB is an advanced database class that supports replication, failover, load balancing, and partitioning.

Google XML Sitemaps will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog.

Intercom for WordPress provides easy integration of the Intercom CRM and messaging app.

Available immediately is BuddyPress 1.6.3. This security and maintenance release addresses problems with activity commenting and avatar cropping. BP 1.6.3 is a strongly recommended upgrade for all sites running any version of BuddyPress 1.6.

Download BuddyPress 1.6.3 from WordPress Extend or BuddyPress.org. Release notes are available on the Codex.

CustomFolio is a simple, responsive theme for portfolio and or business sites.

Night Class is a classic, elegant, and professional theme.

Scuba is a responsive diving-style theme.

Herein is a cautionary tale about automated cross-posting between different social networking web services.

Earlier this morning, I was checking Facebook from my phone, and saw a notification of someone Liking one of my entries. I clicked through to see what it was, and it was a link to a post here on this blog. Facebook didn’t have an excerpt, just a link, so I followed the link to my blog to see what it was. It turned out to just contain another link, which was a shortened URL, so I clicked through to see where it led. It turned out that it linked to another entry here on my blog. And that entry contained another link. Which led to another entry on my blog, again, with a link. A couple more levels deep, I eventually got to an entry that was an automated cross-post to my blog, generated by a checkin on Foursquare.

About the time I was realizing what was happening, I got a notification from my phone that someone had mentioned me on Twitter. I switched over to TweetBot, and saw this:

#bbpBox_289012784581206016 a { text-decoration:none; color:#2AA197; }#bbpBox_289012784581206016 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }

someone nearby there, please drive to @dougal ‘s home and shoot his computer. if that doesn’t stop it – proceed to his hosting provider…

January 9, 2013 9:16 am via MetroTwitReplyRetweetFavorite

@Rarst

Andrey Savchenko

And there were other tweets, mentioning that I was spamming links, and people were starting to wonder if my server had been hacked. But I was already pretty certain I knew what was going on. I just didn’t know why it started happening at this particular time (and I still don’t, really).

#bbpBox_288925135958851584 a { text-decoration:none; color:#0084B4; }#bbpBox_288925135958851584 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }

@dougal Your importer (?) is making lots of Tweets like this.

January 9, 2013 3:28 am via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@MacManXcom

James Huff

#bbpBox_288949200497037313 a { text-decoration:none; color:#1BB0CE; }#bbpBox_288949200497037313 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }

@dougal what’s with all the links?

January 9, 2013 5:03 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@paul_wp

Paul de Wouters

#bbpBox_288962635850985472 a { text-decoration:none; color:#FF3300; }#bbpBox_288962635850985472 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }

@dougal I sense some recursive auto posting going on here…

January 9, 2013 5:57 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@jan_dembowski

Jan Dembowski

#bbpBox_288962753618640896 a { text-decoration:none; color:#2FC2EF; }#bbpBox_288962753618640896 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }

@dougal Uh oh.

January 9, 2013 5:57 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@rmccue

Ryan McCue

#bbpBox_288963280272244736 a { text-decoration:none; color:#1BB0CE; }#bbpBox_288963280272244736 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }

@rmccue @dougal hacked account?

January 9, 2013 5:59 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@paul_wp

Paul de Wouters

(and so forth)

So, here’s the rundown:

• I have a feature turned on in my Delicious.com account which sees when I post links on Twitter, and creates bookmarks for those links.
• On the IFTTT service, I have a recipe which takes new Delicious bookmarks, and creates link posts here on my WordPress blog.
• In WordPress, I had JetPack installed, with the “Publicize” feature set to post links to my new blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

And thus, a loop: Link posted on Twitter, picked up by Delicious; Delicious bookmark picked up by IFTTT and posted to my blog; Blog post picked up by JetPack, and posted to Twitter; Link posted to Twitter, picked up by Delicious, etc.

The mystery is why this suddenly started happening. Because I’ve had those services set up that way for some time now. My immediate solution was to disassociate the automatic cross-posting of new blog entries to other services from the JetPack Publicize feature. But what I may end up doing instead is to disable the monitoring of links on Twitter from my Delicious account, as that function was never as selective as what I really wanted.

But do you want to know who I really blame for this? It’s Twitter. Do you know why? It’s because of a change they made to their terms and conditions a while back.

You see, I used to only cross-post from Twitter to my blog via the IFTTT service, by having it watch for tweets I posted specifically with the hashtag ‘#moblog’. But changes that Twitter made to their terms caused IFTTT to remove a lot of their Twitter functionality. So, I started using the feature in Delicious which could automatically pick up links I posted to Twitter and create bookmarks from them, instead. But since there was no limiting factor (the hashtag), it opened the door for this cross-posting loop.

So there you go: it’s all Twitter’s fault.

Original Article: Loopty-Loop Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings - WordPress, web development, and world domination.

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“And now there’s a Rolls Royce. I would believe literally anything you told me was about to happen right now.” This Verge post on Qualcomm’s insane CES 2013 keynote is the funniest thing I’ve read or seen all year.

Development on WordPress 3.6 has taken off like a rocket, and six areas of focus have already been defined.

• The Post Formats UI will be getting a major usability overhaul, lead by Helen Hou-Sandi.
• Autosave and Post Locking will be getting some new love, so you’ll hopefully never lose your posts again, lead by Andrew Ozz.
• The Editorial Flow experience will be getting a major overhaul too, lead by Daniel Bachhuber, so we can probably expect some bits of Edit Flow to make an appearance.
• Revisions will be getting some improvements, particularly in author attribution and comparing diffs, lead by Peter Westwood.
• Menus will be seeing some usability improvements, lead by Dave Martin.
• Distraction-Free Writing will be getting more visibility, a smoother experience, more features, and some overall polish. A leader for this project has yet to be chosen.

If you aren’t already following along with the Make WordPress Core blog, I highly recommend doing so now, especially if you’re a plugin or theme developer, or just someone whose livelihood relies on WordPress in general.

Dylan Tweney writes on how to take back control of your own social networks.

A new update of WordPress for Windows Phone is now available in the Windows Phone Store. We’re pleased to introduce version 1.9, which adds some very powerful features! Here’s what’s new:

Featured Images Support

We’re happy to report that you can now upload a Featured Image for your blog posts as long as your theme supports it. To set an image as featured, just tap on it after adding it to the post content area and click the ‘feature’ button — see the screenshot on the right.

Note that you’ll need WordPress 3.4.1 or greater and a theme that supports featured images in order to use this feature.

Full Screen Editing

Your phone has a relatively small screen and when writing a post, a large portion of it is taken up by the keyboard. While you’re not likely to write “The Divine Comedy” on your phone, wouldn’t it be great to have just a little more space? In 1.9 the content editor has its own page that fills the whole screen.

When the post is ready to go, just press the back button and you’ll be right back in the Post editor.

Reliability Improvements

In addition to the new features, we’ve worked hard on making the app even more stable and fast. In total, almost 20 bugs and crashes have been fixed in this release. You can see the details on what was taken care of on the trac roadmap.

Download

Ready to get the latest? Click the link below to update the best WordPress app for Windows Phone so far.

Download AppWordPress for Windows PhoneSupported: WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress (v. 2.9+)

Contributors

A huge thanks to the contributors that worked on this release:  aerych, daniloercoli.

Would you like to get in on the fun? Let us know at windowsphonedev.wordpress.org  or head on over to make/mobile on WordPress.org and we’ll help you get started as a contributor.  Do you have an idea for a new feature or have you encountered a bug that needs fixing? Tell us about it on the WordPress for Windows Phone Trac.

Make sure to follow @WPWindowsPhone on Twitter to get the latest news first.

If you’re using Social and haven’t yet upgraded to 2.7, make sure to do so before January 15th. The URL endpoint that Social talks to has changed and the old endpoint (used on versions prior to 2.7) will be going away on January 15th.

New plugins

FikraTicker is a simple newsticker that displays the recent news/posts on your website/blog.

Jellyfish Invaders adds animated flying retro space invaders to your blog.

WP Ads Within Contents allows you to show ads within your post content.

Updated plugins

CloudFlare ensures your WordPress blog is running optimally on the CloudFlare platform.

Contextual Related Posts helps you increase reader retention and reduce bounce rates by displaying a set of related posts on your website or in your feed.

Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent.

Jetpack allows you to supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.

Twenty-twelve was an exciting year for Automattic. We added 48 new Automatticians and it’s been delightful to see the effect the new folks have had on the company. We made over 40,000 commits to our various repositories, about half of those on WP.com alone. Contained in those commits are countless improvements to the experience for WP.com, but I’m just as proud of the things we removed and streamlined: the WP.com homepage has been drastically simplified, and a completely revamped reader is launching this week. Engagement started rising again after being flat in 2011. Support responses that used to take days now take hours or less. We added 75M uniques to our our network. There is a demo WordPress app on every iPhone and iPad in every Apple store I’ve visited in the US. (If you contribute to WordPress, show it to your friends next time you’re in a store and say “I help make this!”) We did two acquisitions, one announced, one not yet. It looks like we’ll grow the team by at least another 60 people this year. There’s so much more already done that hasn’t been announced yet or that’s coming that I’m bursting to share, but the surprise is at least half the fun. Stay tuned.

Cell is a clean and lightweight theme.

CyberChimps features Twitter Bootstrap, and responsive touch friendly theme options.

Fotogram is a clean and fast loading theme.

Spartan is a responsive magazine theme.

Zenith is a responsive theme designed for blogs and magazines that aren’t about fluff.

Here’s an interesting TED talk on a team challenge on building the tallest structure with twenty sticks of spaghetti and a marshmallow. See why kindergarten students do better than business school graduates. (Hint: Learning by shipping.)

New plugins

Advanced Blog Metrics allows you to learn more about your readers and how they react to your posts.

Media Library Assistant provides several enhancements for managing the Media library

Updated plugins

Block Bad Queries protects your website against malicious URL requests.

Jetpack allows you to supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.

Steven Sinofsky, known at Microsoft for turning around the Office franchise and most recently as head of Windows, where he turned it around post-Vista. He left Microsoft a few months ago, and just started a blog on WordPress.com called Learning by Shipping. It’s a concept I’m particularly fond of.

WordPress had a great 2012, bbPress had a great 2012, and we had a great 2012 too!

This handy report was generated for several WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered WordPress.org blogs with moderate to high traffic, and it really is quite nice. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts from our report.

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 950,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 17 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

So, with visits from 217 countries world-wide, and the United States, India, and the United Kingdom rounding out the top, we had more visits than 17 years worth of tourists to a small European country. That’s not bad, but we could always do better.

What would you kind folks love to see from us in 2013?