The Less Is More Post

by Thord Daniel Hedengren May 3^rd, 2012 1 Response

Clutter. I hate it. Crap everywhere, post-it’s, scribbles, hamburger wrappings, fiftythree beer cans, a broken pencil, an iPhone charger, USB cable for unknown peripheral, a hand out from the local Thai place, two printed quotes, a dirty espresso cup, napkins, some coins, two iPads, a pen for the Wacom board nobody uses, and so on. Clutter. I really do hate it.

Tons of menu items and unnecessary options. I hate that too. Option pages for themes and plugins that are just over the top, settings for everything which leaves the end-user staggered and with nothing that truly helps.

Opinion

The True Spirit of Open Source Revealed

by Tom Ewer May 1^st, 2012 Leave a comment

Wikipedia defines open source as “a philosophy or pragmatic methodology that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details”. I think we all tend to lose sight of the concept that WordPress is an open source platform at times. We can develop a sense of entitlement. Sometimes it is good to remind ourselves of what open source truly means.

Opinion

The Rise of Negative SEO

by Joe Foley April 26^th, 2012 30 Responses

Ah, Google. … Where to start?

OK, let’s start here: There’s a lot of craziness happening in Google’s search results lately. Some of it seems to possibly be related to some algorithm changes that were made recently, but some of it seems more deeply rooted than recent changes.

It’s hard to say why certain things are happening, and it may sound preposterous, but I would guess that even Google itself doesn’t know why some of it is happening.

Opinion

10 Things That The Distraction Free Editor Doesn’t Get Right

by Tom Ewer April 26^th, 2012 7 Responses

I write on average 3-4 blog posts a day – perhaps 3,000 words. I spend a lot of time in WordPress. So finding the optimal solution for blog post writing is pretty important to me.

With that in mind, yesterday I gave you 3 Reasons Why I Use The Distraction Free Editor (And Why You Should Too). Although I consider the distraction free editor (or DFE) to be a far superior option to the visual editor, that does not make it perfect. Far from it in fact – the distraction free editor comes with its own unique set of bugs and flaws.

Opinion

Blogging with WordPress, really?

by Thord Daniel Hedengren April 26^th, 2012 4 Responses

Did you know that WordPress used to be a – wait for it – blogging platform? Not a CMS, not an alternative for the mammoth sites of today, but a blog platform. Some will call it the good old days, which would be a lie wrapped in cuddly pink nostalgia fluff. Because let’ get something straight right away: WordPress has never been as good as it is today.

Again: WordPress has never been as good as it is today.

Yet there still are competitors, and new ones appear every now and then. What’s up with that?

Opinion

3 Reasons Why I Use The Distraction Free Editor (And Why You Should Too)

by Tom Ewer April 25^th, 2012 2 Responses

The distraction free editor is something you can easily miss altogether as a WordPress user. After all, it is accessed only by a rather subtle button on the visual editor toolbar.

And if you do hit that button, it is not immediately obvious why you might choose to use it as a genuine alternative to the visual editor. In fact, its potentially overwhelming minimalism might immediately turn many people off.

Opinion

Should You Open Links In New Windows?

by Tom Ewer April 19^th, 2012 12 Responses

The WPMU DEV Facebook Page is a great resource (if I do say so myself). Not only do WPMU.org fans get the freshest posts delivered straight to their timeline, but we can ask questions relating to WordPress and get answers in moments.

According to some recent polls, most WPMU DEV fans have never had an active WordPress.com account (a question I asked to coincide with my recent WordPress.com vs self-hosted WordPress article). And 83% of you think Matt Mullenweg is a good guy (the other 17% are not so complimentary).
Get To The Point…

Opinion

Who Buys Who In The End?

by Thord Daniel Hedengren April 19^th, 2012 4 Responses

What would be the equivalent of Facebook buying Instagram in the world of blogging platforms? This is seriously a thought I’ve been wrestling with for a little while now, which probably marks me as slightly more disturbed than most of you actually thought, the Editorial Overlord Monsters included. I don’t care, I get paid in chocolate kittens.

Opinion

WordPress.com vs. Self-Hosted WordPress – What You Need To Know

by Tom Ewer April 17^th, 2012 47 Responses

When I was first starting out with WordPress, I was rather confused by the fact that there seemed to be two versions. I had previously built websites from scratch with Notepad and a FTP client, so the world of content management systems was new to me. And before I had even started – before I even had a particularly good understanding of what WordPress actually was – I had to make a choice.

Development, Opinion

Stop Writing Stupid Tutorials

by Thord Daniel Hedengren April 12^th, 2012 2 Responses

I’m going to start you guys off with a quote today, signed the always excellent Konstantin Kovshenin:

Is it considered “cool” to copy/paste all my plugins into my theme’s functions.php file?

Now why would he write something like that? It is part of a paragraph (obviously) that makes fun of all these “paste this code into your theme’s functions.php file” tutorials out there. Sarcasm all around, and you all know how I love that shit. And irony, irony is also great fun. Ironing, not so much.