WordPress.org

photo credit: Scorpions and Centaurs – cc

WordPress 4.0 is on track to introduce several new oEmbed providers, according to the most recent core report from Mike Schroder. The following sites and services have been added to the whitelist of oEmbed providers:

• TED talks
• Mixcloud
• CollegeHumor.com
• Issuu
• Polldaddy’s short URL format
• YouTube playlist URLs

The process of getting added to the whitelist of providers is not as easy as it seems. The design decision section of the WordPress core handbook states that the provider must be an established, popular, and trusted site. It must also properly and fully implement the oEmbed specification.

When determining how established and popular a service is, there are nine questions to consider, i.e. “If similar services are already supported, how does this service compare in terms of size, features, and backing?” and “Does the service make an effort to build relationships with developers, such as through robust APIs?” New oEmbed service providers that are proposed for inclusion in core will have to answer these considerations to ensure that it’s not a hasty, shortsighted addition.

However, if a site supports oEmbed, anyone can add the site and URL format to the internal whitelist by calling wp_oembed_add_provider(). Many plugins take this route when the provider hasn’t yet been added to core. For example, a trac ticket was submitted for adding oembed support for CodePen. Since the site needs time to become established and popular, a simple plugin with one line of code uses the wp_oembed_add_provider() method to add support in the meantime. This helps to gauge the community’s interest before whitelisting the provider.

Of the six new providers listed above, the YouTube playlist URLs addition is likely to have the broadest appeal, given YouTube’s massive user base. You’ll be able to make use of the new oEmbed providers as soon as WordPress 4.0 ships. A beta is expected around the first week of July. The official release is targeted for the week of August 25.

This month we featured a project called VersionPress that brings version control to WordPress, a concept that has many in the community excited. The VersionPress development team is seeking $30,000 in funding by the end of June in order to get it off the ground. However, they aren’t the only ones working on adding git-based version control to WordPress.

Earlier this month, developer Matt Shaw quietly released Revisr on WordPress.org. Revisr is a plugin that allows developers to synchronize with any Git repository and easily commit, push, pull, and branch changes from within the WordPress admin. It’s different from VersionPress in that it’s designed to integrate with a remote repository, ie. one hosted on GitHub or Bitbucket. Unlike VersionPress, which hasn’t yet met its funding goals, Revisr is free and available now.

The plugin allows you to manage your WordPress website with a git repository and currently includes the following features:

• Track changes to the files and database of your WordPress installation
• Optionally use different database versions for each branch
• Commit and push changes to a remote repository (including Bitbucket and Github)
• Pull changes down from a remote repository
• Easily toggle between branches
• Revert your website files and/or database to an earlier commit
• Discard any unwanted changes
• Manage .gitignore to prevent unwanted files/directories from being tracked

“I made Revisr to simplify the development process,” Shaw told the Tavern. “There are currently no plugins on WordPress.org that allow developers or site admins to use all of the main features of Git through the WordPress dashboard, and I made Revisr to do just that,” he said.

“At the same time, I wanted it to be simple enough so it could be used by people who aren’t necessarily interested in Git, but are interested in having backups and being able to quickly revert changes if needed.”

For the sake of user-friendliness, Revisr includes an interface in the admin for committing, reverting, pushing and pulling changes:

Revisr makes it easy to view changes in files:

A commit history for the site is available in the WordPress admin:

How to Set Up Revisr

The plugin has three requirements:

• A WordPress installation in the root folder of a Git repository
• Git must be installed on the server (most updated versions of cPanel have it preinstalled)
• PHP exec (safe mode off, can be configured in your php.ini)

If you want to use Revisr with an existing site, you must ensure that the “.git” directory is in the root directory of the WordPress installation. The plugin will then attempt to use the settings stored in Git for pushing to/pulling from any remote repositories, which can be defined on the plugin settings page. Revisr supports git through SSH or HTTPS:

If you’re using SSH for authentication, you will need to generate an SSH key and add it to Bitbucket/Github.

The process for setting up a new installation with Revisr is fairly easy:

• Create the repository on Bitbucket or Github
• Clone the repository to your computer, add WordPress, and push it to the repository.
• Upload the entire repository to the server, install WordPress, and add Revisr

Benefits of Using Revisr: Revision Tracking, Branching, and Backups

Matt Shaw believes that Revisr can benefit WordPerss admins in several ways in addition to revision tracking. “Revisr helps the admins see all files that have been changed and the specific changes within those,” he said. “This is an advantage if many files need to be modified and helps to keep issues at a minimum. An added benefit is having backups and being able to quickly spot and revert some website hacks if they occur.”

“Branching also enables site admins to easily test theme changes or new functionality and quickly toggle back and forth between different versions of the site,” Shaw noted. “For example, a site admin could create a new branch to preview layout changes, and switch back to the original branch and old layout if needed.”

Recent updates to the plugin include the option to keep the database separate between branches. This allows users to go back and restore the database from any commit in which the database was also backed up.

Since Revisr tracks both database and file changes, it is suitable for keeping a complete backup of the site. Site admins can easily make full restore points before major changes such as a WordPress core or plugin upgrade.

In the next major update, Shaw plans to give admins more control on what gets committed and reverted, allowing specific files to be reverted without affecting the overall project. He also plans on adding the ability to tag commits with a version number and the ability to view/merge changes between branches. Future versions of the plugin will include the ability to merge changes between branches and the ability to schedule backups of both the website files and database.

The Future of the Revisr Plugin

I asked Shaw about the future of the plugin and if he plans on monetizing it. “The plugin will always be completely free and open source,” he replied. “We are also working on a paid standalone application that can interface with Revisr that will allow teams and web firms to manage multiple websites using Git. However, the full functionality of the plugin will always be free.”

Shaw is working with a team that aims to launch Revisr Pro, a paid application, later this year. Revisr Pro will work with any type of project, but it will also be able to interface with the Revisr plugin via an API to add more features to both the plugin and the standalone application. “It’s designed to simplify managing large amounts of websites (20+) with multiple environments, with file and database tracking with Git, project-level tasks, and team support,” Shaw said. “Revisr Pro is also able to deploy and configure new projects, simplifying the workflow for teams using Git, and allowing more time to be spent focused on the project itself.” They plan to feature straightforward pricing, and won’t charge for additional users or projects.

Shaw is currently the sole developer on the Revisr WordPress plugin project, although he has friends who are helping out with testing and design. His plugin is different from VersionPress in that it isn’t targeted toward bringing version control to the masses. Revisr is geared more toward developers and isn’t supported by a crowd-funding campaign. Shaw is just one man working to create a plugin that helps improve his own workflow. You can download Revisr on WordPress.org and watch for updates as the plugin continues to develop.

A pricing table gives your potential customers the ability to quickly compare and visualize the different feature options within your pricing structure. With a little bit of pricing strategy, these comparison tables can be an effective way of positioning your packages for better sales.

Creating and styling pricing tables can be a challenge if you’re not very handy with HTML and CSS. Easy Pricing Table is a new free plugin that aims to make it simple for anyone to set up a visually compelling pricing table. The default design is a flat style with colors that can be set via a user-friendly colorpicker in the admin.

The pricing table is responsive and includes smooth hover effects when mousing over the columns. A live demo is available at JW Themes and Plugins.

Easing Pricing Table has a settings panel where you can easily customize the appearance of the table as well as each individual column. You’ll have the option to set the title, price, features, duration, button text, URL, column color and order.

Tables can be displayed using the auto-generated shortcode or via a widget. The plugin allows you to create multiple pricing tables and maintain separate customization settings for each. Be advised that if the pricing tables don’t match the demo exactly, it’s likely because they are designed to take on some of the characteristics of your theme, ie. typography, headline styles, etc. You can further customize this via CSS if necessary.

I was impressed by how easy this plugin is to use. Many other pricing table plugins also use shortcodes, but they often require you to manually input all the information as attributes. This becomes messy and difficult to visualize. However, this plugin does an excellent job of providing an interface that allows you to quickly create, customize, and visualize the columns of your pricing table.

Easy Pricing Table is one of the fastest ways to create a beautiful pricing table without having to touch any code. If you’re using a theme with a flat style design, then this plugin should drop in nicely. Download it for free from WordPress.org.

Over the weekend, Ryan McCue and collaborators released version 1.1 of the JSON REST API plugin. The WP API team is aiming to have it ready for inclusion in WordPress 4.1, which will drop later this year.

This release focused heavily on testing, fixing bugs discovered through tests, and improving the API documentation. New routes have been added for taxonomies and terms. Excerpts and password-protected post handling have also been improved. Revision endpoint tests are new in 1.1. Coverage for post endpoint testing is now at more than 54% for the whole class and more than 80% for the main methods. McCue says this figure will continue to rise over the next few releases. You can view all the changes and bug fixes for this release on GitHub.

The WP API team often receives questions regarding how to handle authentication. Version 1.1 includes full documentation on authentication methods, including cookie authentication (for plugins/themes running on a site) and OAuth (for desktop/web/mobile clients accessing a site externally). A basic authentication method is also included in the docs and is useful for development purposes only.

I’ve been working with the WP API team to help get documentation organized and presented in a way that’s easy to read and navigate. We’re in the process of merging all the docs into one centralized hub at wp-api.org, which pulls from the various docs in the WP API GitHub repos. We’re working to make this a top-notch resource for any developer who wants to build with the new API.

Work for version 1.2 is already underway. “With version 1.2 and onwards, we’ll be tackling a bunch of extra testing for our endpoints, with the aim of eventually reaching >90% coverage,” McCue noted in the release announcement. If you’d like to join in collaboration on GitHub, the team is always looking for help.

Are any of our readers already building something with the new JSON REST API? Let us know in the comments. Is there anything specific that you’d like to see added to the documentation?

The big daddy of WordCamps is open about another week for speaker submissions, if you have something interesting you’d like to say to the WordPress world send in your application to speak at WordCamp SF here.

Dates have been announced for the third annual PressNomics conference. Organized by Joshua and Sally Strebel of Pagely, PressNomics is a conference similar to a WordCamp but focuses exclusively on the business of WordPress and the economy surrounding it.

The conference will take place January 22nd – 24th, 2015 in Tempe, AZ. The venue is the same as last year, the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel. There is a discounted rate of $194 per night available on a first come, first serve basis. PressNomics sells out fast but while you can book your hotel room now, tickets don’t go on sale until August 6th at 10AM Pacific.

PressNomics 2 Courtesy Of Mattreport.com

PressNomics is a three-day event to relax, collaborate, and discuss the economics surrounding WordPress.  Notable speakers in the past include Mark Jaquith, Cory Miller, and Mikkel Svane. Chris Lema and Matt Mederios both have great reviews of the event when they attended in 2013. It’s quickly become one of the premiere events outside of WordCamps.

PressNomics is something I’ve been wanting to attend since its creation. I was never able to attend due to finances and timing. However, I’m happy to say that I’ll be in attendance for version 3 of the event and will be covering it for the Tavern.

I’m really looking forward to surrounding myself with the movers and shakers of the WordPress business world. I want to know what everyone is thinking and get a feel for what direction WordPress is heading. Let me know in the comments if you plan on going to PressNomics 3. I’d love to meet and talk to you.

After six years of serving cold beverages at the Tavern and publishing more than 2,100 posts, our media library has over 2,770 images. Over the years, the meta information I give images has changed from very little to as descriptive as possible. For example, we use a theme that utilizes featured images. When I upload a featured image, I’ll give it a title that’s descriptive to the post it will be attached to.

In this example, the title of the image is Market Share Pie Featured Image since the post it would be attached to talks about the market share of GravityForms and would be the featured image for the post. For the Alt Text, I described the image as, GravityForms Market Share Pie Featured Image. The ALT text is usually just the image title with spaces in between.

When I need to reuse a featured image, all I have to do is search for Featured Image in the media library. The search results are made up of all of the previous featured images I’ve uploaded. Since we don’t have too many to wade through, finding the one I want doesn’t take long.

Empowered To Improve Media Library Search Results

The WordPress media library is an archive of content. The larger it gets, the more difficult it can be to find things. Personally, I think being as descriptive as possible with each field with the exception of the caption is the easiest way to improve the media library search engine results. If I fail to be descriptive with images and provide ample meta information, then whose fault is it when the media library can’t find what I’m looking for?

This is one of those areas of WordPress where I believe users are empowered. They have the choice of either providing as much or as little information as possible. I think the less information provided over time could prove to be detrimental to the media library search functionality. I’d love to hear from those with experience in this area, especially from site owners who have thousands of items within their media library.

What naming convention you use to manage your WordPress media library? Do you use any plugins to aid in media management? I don’t think my convention is the best, but it works for me.

At age 15, Nikhil Vimal is the youngest guest to ever be interviewed on WordPress Weekly. Based out of Minnesota, Vimal has quickly made his mark in the WordPress community. He’s already spoken at his first WordCamp and contributed to the core of WordPress through the inline documentation project. He’s also been confirmed to speak at WordCamp Milwaukee 2014.

In this interview, we get a unique perspective on what it’s like to contribute to WordPress at such a young age. We also learn about some of the projects he’s working on with TechVoltz.com. This young man has a good head on his shoulders and is in line to be part of the next generation of WordPress developers.

Stories Discussed:

WordPress Trunk Adds New Beta Testing Tab to Plugins Screen
VersionPress Adopts The GPL Software License
Preview the WordPress Menu Customizer: Alpha Plugin Ready for Testing
WordPress Themes Suck at Accessibility: It’s Time to Fix It

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Friday, June 27th 3 P.M. Eastern – Peter Bui of the Joomla Beat podcast

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Listen To Episode #152:

When testing BuddyPress themes and plugins, it’s helpful to have some data to populate the network and demo its social components. Manually adding users with avatars, activity updates, messages, etc, can be a tedious process. Fortunately, there’s a way to automate the creation of demo data.

The BuddyPress Default Data plugin instantly creates a bunch of users, messages, friend connections, groups, topics, and activity items for testing purposes. Users are created with avatars generated by 8biticon.com. After installing the plugin, you’ll have the option to select what kind of demo data you want to create:

After you make your selections and import the data, you’ll see a success message detailing all the new data created:

Check your site and you’ll find all the new members, activity, groups, etc. Activity items will all have the same timestamp, as they were created at the same time.

Before using the plugin, you’ll want to make sure to turn off email notifications for the admin user or else you’ll blow up your inbox with a ton of emails generated by the data as it’s created.

The plugin also has the ability to automatically clean out all the test data when you’re finished. Using the “Clear BuddyPress Data” button will truncate the tables for messages, groups, notifications, friends and forum posts. Be advised that it will delete all users except for the one with ID=1 and all the corresponding data, i.e. usermeta, activity, etc. This plugin should be used with caution and only on a test site.

Hopefully the BuddyPress Default Data plugin will save you a little time when testing BuddyPress and its extensions. You can download it from WordPress.org. If WP-CLI is part of your workflow, then you might opt for using Boone Gorges’ WP-CLI community package of BuddyPress commands. It allows you to quickly create demo data using the command line.

Last month, Twitter rolled out its new mute button feature which allows users to filter out unwanted tweets. This makes it easy for your followers to turn you off entirely if they feel that you’re overloading them with tweets. Users won’t always opt to unfollow you, so you’ll never know who has pushed the mute button and is no longer listening. That’s why it’s important not to flood your followers with a constant stream of information that may not be relevant to your core audience.

In light of the new ease of muting on Twitter, some WordPress publishers may want to consider scaling back the tweets that are automatically sent out when posts are published. Publish to Twitter is a free plugin from the folks at 10up. It essentially allows you to tweet by category, instead of publishing all of your posts to Twitter.

Additionally, the plugin allows you to authorize multiple Twitter accounts and associate categories with each one. This can help you target your content to send to the right group of followers.

In order to use the plugin, you’ll need to create a new Twitter application, which is an easy/guided process. Next, copy the Consumer and Consumer Secret keys from your new application and paste them into the plugin’s settings page. You can then successfully associate categories to your authenticated Twitter accounts.

If you’re constantly publishing content and automatically sending it to Twitter, this handy plugin may save you from getting muted. Download Publish to Twitter for free from WordPress.org.

After participating in the WordPress community for several years, it’s easy to forget there are new users entering the community every day. As someone who writes about WordPress for a living, it’s frustrating to come across errors such as the incorrect spelling of WordPress or the incorrect logo being used. However, I’ve discovered that most of the time, they just don’t know any better. Even established websites make simple mistakes such as labeling Automattic as the parent company of WordPress.

The following cheat sheet for newcomers and veterans of WordPress quickly addresses some of the most common mistakes often made when writing about WordPress. It also has general information about the project for quick reference.

1. WordPress is camel cased meaning the P is capitalized. It’s spelled WordPress.
2. WordPress is a registered trademark. As such, you’re not allowed to have WordPress in the domain name without explicit permission.
3. Here is the correct WordPress logo to use. Notice the short and squat versus the tall and eloquent.
4. 
5. WordPress the open source project is free (free as in speech) and licensed under the GPLv2
6. Automattic does not own WordPress and is not the parent company of WordPress. It’s the parent company of WordPress.com.
7. WordPress.org is a free open source project anyone can use. WordPress.com is a hosted platform. A good analogy is to think of WordPress the open source project as a house that you can manipulate any way you want. WordPress.com is like an apartment complex. This guide explains the major differences between the two.
8. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little are the creators of WordPress. For historical purposes, read this post and the first comment which is considered the birth of WordPress.
9. WordPress the open source project was started in 2003 and is over 10 years old.
10. Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic, the founder of the non-profit WordPress Foundation, occasional lead developer for the open source WordPress Project, and owner of investment company Audrey.co.
11. The WordPress.org support forum is staffed by non-paid volunteers.
12. The recommended place to download WordPress themes and plugins is from their respective directories. Every theme and plugin hosted on WordPress.org is free of charge.
13. 13. It’s Automattic with two t’s. via Michael Quinn

This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you have any tips or suggestions, please add them in the comments. I’ll keep the post updated so it can be a relevant, living guide. By the way, if you read an article about WordPress that contains a mistake, respectfully point the author in the right direction.

CLI Cheat Sheet is a handy new resource for any WordPress developer who is just getting started with the command line. This week on the Dradcast, Brad Williams linked to the cheat sheet, which the folks at WebDevStudios put together for their team. They decided to share the resource with the community.

The repository is broken down into several files, separated by command type, including:

• General Command Line (CLI) basics
• Git Commands
• Grunt Commands
• Server Commands
• Moderate/Advanced Commands

The basic commands document covers the very basics, such as changing directories and opening files. A section for more moderate/advanced commands is prefaced with a friendly notation: “The somewhat scary crevices of the command line.”

The team at WebDevStudios plans to continue building out the cheat sheet and will be adding more commands into the repo as they are using them and remember them. If you want to share a few commands that every beginner ought to know, feel free to contribute on GitHub.

Make sure to star the CLI Cheat Sheet repo for easy reference and check back periodically for more commands. If you’re just starting with the command line, this is a nice resource to help you grasp the basics and get your footing.

Datanyze, a company specializing in determining what web technologies are being used based on their code signature, has new data indicating GravityForms has the most market share. Out of the top one million websites ranked by Alexa that use hosted forms, GravityForms was detected on 53.3% of them. That’s more than all of the other form plugins and services in the chart combined.

GravityForms Leading The Way With 53.3%

I’m surprised Ninja Forms or Contact Form 7 is not on the pie chart. I thought Contact Form 7 would be their biggest competitor but it turns out it’s Wufoo and other form generating services. I contacted Datanyze to figure out if those systems are tracked or not.

Jon Hearty of Datanyze said, “The reason they aren’t there is because we do not currently track them. We add technologies everyday, usually based on requests from our customers and prospects.”

Datanyze explains on their frequently asked questions page how they obtain the data and determine code signatures.

Most web technologies have certain footprints or “signatures” when used by one of the websites. For example, if you view the HTML code for any WordPress site, you will find something like this: <meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress …” />. By finding and cataloging these signatures, Datanyze can determine not only which technologies a website is using, but also when they added or dropped them.

With the top one million websites ranked by Alexa changing each month, the data represented in the pie chart is only a snapshot of time. But what the data shows is that GravityForms is doing exceptionally well, especially against the other form solutions being monitored.

I’d love to see more WordPress specific contact form solutions added to the chart such as Contact Form 7 and Ninja forms just to get a more complete picture.

photo credit: Orí – cc

Select boxes with a long list of options can quickly get out of hand. One common example is a state or country dropdown. Perhaps you’ve become desensitized to the expert scrolling and mousework required to navigate the most cumbersome select boxes. Ordinarily, they’re anything but user-friendly.

Chosen is a handy jQuery plugin created by the folks at Harvest with the purpose of making select boxes more customizable and easier to use. The project is well maintained and has received contributions from more than 70 contributors on GitHub. You can view a live example of Chosen on its project demo page with side by side comparisons to browser default select boxes.

With Chosen in place, simple select boxes get a larger, more sleek display with an auto-suggest-enabled search box at the top:

Multiple select boxes are notoriously difficult to use for making multiple selections. Chosen allows you to type in your selections and easily view / remove selections.

It also has optgroup support for multiple select boxes with groups:

Those are just a couple of examples of how Chosen makes long, unwieldy select boxes more user-friendly. The project demo page includes additional examples and instructions on how to customize the default text, change the no results text, limit selected options, add right to left support and much more.

Chosen for WordPress

The good news for WordPress users is that Brent Shepherd wrote a plugin that utilizes Chosen with select boxes in posts and pages. If your site has a form with a long select box, you may want to check out Chosen for WordPress.

It applies Chosen to any select box within post or page content and will only load the relevant JS and CSS files if a select box is included in your form. The plugin has support out of the box for the [ contact-form ] shortcode which is used by the Grunion Contact form, Contact Form 7, and Jetpack. You can also force the Chosen script and styles to load on a page by including the [ chosen ] shortcode.

Chosen works nicely for contact forms that have long location select boxes or questions with a limited list of possible answers. Another excellent use case for the script is with BuddyPress profile fields. Profile questions are a common place where you might find long, cumbersome select boxes. Putting the power of Chosen to work for BuddyPress would be a welcome addition to the compatibility already included for contact form plugins.

Browser support includes Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE9. Chosen also has legacy support for IE8. Please note that the script is currently disabled on iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android mobile devices.

If you like how Chosen transforms select boxes, you can download Chosen for WordPress for free from the official plugin directory.