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My Tshirt Is Ruder Than Your Tshirt

In: , , On: 2010 / 09 / 24

This shirt nicely matches my mood sometimes at work, especially if the day is crippled with meetings. I like its aesthetic simplicity, the university athletic look and the “subtle” details that completely escape the non-initiated bystander (anno 1337 and the latin motto “Subsiste Sermonem Statim” which apparently translates to “Stop Speaking Immediately”)

STFU

Seriously, sporting a giant “STFU” sign right in front of some people is refreshing sometimes :) Bought from the funny people over at ThinkGeek, thick, top quality, well worth the $16 or so.

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New Blog For YOURLS

In: , , On: 2010 / 09 / 23

I’ve just set up blog.yourls.org where hopefully I will, guess what, post about YOURLS development. I think the major stuff will be cross posted here too, at least for now, and I’ll blog there about all the misc and fun stuff I never write about (like plugins! owwww plugins!)

On a WordPress related side note, the theme running on blog.yourls.org is my first attempt at making a child theme. The whole theme was done in less than 20 minutes with 30 lines of CSS and nothing more. Child themes are Viagra for unskilled and lazy theme designers \o/

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Backup and Archive Twitter To WordPress

In: , , , On: 2010 / 09 / 21

I’ve tried various plugins to backup my tweets into WordPress but none did really the job (actually most were doing much more stuff I didn’t need, and most didn’t keep track of the “in reply to” bits I wanted to have), so I made my own, which has powered my tweet archive for some time now.

The plugin is now available for anyone interested: Ozh’ Tweet Archiver (along with my archive’s theme if you need an example). Cheers!

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Plugin Pages on WordPress: Before, Now, and My Take

In: , , On: 2010 / 09 / 18

Recently, as part of a broader redesign, the plugin pages on WordPress.org have begun to reshape. There are some nice addition, for instance now voting that a plugin is broken sends you directly to the support forum to state your problem. But there are changes that I strongly dislike, in particular the removal of the author name and URL, and many think that way.
Read More (1 word)

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Infographics: The Process To Make WordPress Plugins

In: , , , On: 2010 / 09 / 14

… where “making an UI” means coding the plugin option page, making it understandable, carefully pick some wording, don’t overwhelm with unneeded explanations but make sure everything is crystal clear, throw a bit of jQuery to make the page more functional.

… and sometimes I’m a bit fed up with this pattern. Note that it’s probably because I lack UI design skills.

NB: If you found this post title to be deceivingly catchy and overselling, you’re right.

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My Tshirt Is Cooler Than Your Tshirt

In: , , , On: 2010 / 09 / 13

My latest tshirt is so insanely full of awesomeness that I will have to blog about it on a weekly basis to share how much I dig it. Seriously, every time I pass nearby a mirror, I just stop and contemplate it for 10 minutes.

I got it after @Viper007Bond mentioned a cool wallpaper which led me to search for more and find it on Red Bubble. I had it ordered within seconds, delivered within a couple of days and boy it is sweet. Quality is superb and the printing looks nice and long lasting. A nice touch on this site is that when ordered a shirt you can send a note to the artist who designed it :)

I have a few really cool tshirts, and I just love tshirts anyway (who doesn’t?) so a friend suggested I maintain a simple gallery with pics of them. Will do.

Got to go, I have a complete collection of Calvin & Hobbes to read once again.

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Spam Magnet Blog Posts

In: , , , , On: 2010 / 09 / 06

Lately, every time I manually flagged a comment as spam, I started to have the impression that they all were posted on the same post, namely an old announcement for my plugin "Absolute Comments".

An SQL query later, my impression was confirmed: this blog post *is* a spam magnet:

I suspect that some particular keywords in page titles act like pheromones to spammers. These keywords probably include "comments", "guestbook", "feedback" and anything that will make them think there's a form they can spam.

The SQL query I used to list blog posts sorted by the number of spam they get is:

PLAIN TEXT
SQL:
  1. SELECT COUNT(wp_posts.ID) AS spam_count, wp_posts.ID, wp_posts.post_title
  2. FROM wp_posts, wp_comments
  3. WHERE wp_comments.comment_approved = 'spam' AND wp_comments.comment_post_ID=wp_posts.ID
  4. GROUP BY wp_posts.ID
  5. ORDER BY spam_count DESC

If you want to play with it, I made a quick standalone script that will run the query and output a pretty interactive pie chart. Download spam-magnet.txt, rename as .php and put it in your blog root (where wp-load.php is). Live demo: spam-magnets.php.

Edit: per request, I've made this a plugin too.

If you run it and notice a pattern on your blogs too, share your analysis! I've always enjoyed useless fun stats :)

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Into Plugins? You Will Love This. #plugindevbook

In: , , On: 2010 / 09 / 01

So, peeps, I have good news and bad news. And by good news, I mean super mega hyper exciting announcement.

The good news: three persons, carefully handpicked among all the three most important people in WordPress, are writing a book, I mean, THE book, on WordPress Plugin Development. These three fine chaps are Brad Williams, Justin Tadlock and me.

Let me rephrase this in a way that will more reflect my state of mind and how I think about this. OMFG I'm writing a fucking book!!!1!!one!!eleven

Ozh' State of mind (allegory)

The book, entitled "Professional WordPress Plugin Development" (yeah, my suggestion of "Pluginz That Pwn" didn't make it through) should hit shelves in March 2011 and will be published by the cool geek lovers from WROX, in the same collection as Brad's "Professional WordPress".

Not only this is a super author team, but also we'll be lended a hand by a top notch Technical Editor, an incredible guy who is a bit more active than hyperactive kids drinking coffee on steroids, who blogs, commits, speaks, twitts and never sleeps, also known as Andrew Nacin. His role will be to crack the whip and molest us when we write dumbities and acting like we actually know a thing or two about a thing or two (which should happen more than he hopes)

So far the project is running great and what we have written already is, hmm, let me carefully pick an appropriate word, I'd say, like, awesome.

In the next few months be sure to follow @Brad, @Justin and @me for some cool info and exciting news about the book and how we're doing :)

Oh, and the bad news: I have a fracking sprained index finger on my right hand. Which means I can kiss good bye my 60ish WPM, precisely when I have to write pages as if they were raining. Bleh²x100.

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Best Of #DeveloperMovies

In: , , , On: 2010 / 08 / 29

There has been one of the funniest && geekiest meme ever on Twitter this week-end: #DeveloperMovies, where people suggested movie titles using code. A lot of fun stuff, some clever stuff, various languages.

Here are a few of the best things I've found and could understand (I did have to Google a few hints sometimes, I feel like I lack a bit of classical movie culture:). Some are duplicate titles with different source code. A few obvious, some quite smart. Can you guess them all?
Read More (1 word)

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How To Make $350 Per Week With WordPress

In: , , On: 2010 / 08 / 25

WordPress, you use it, you love it, wouldn't it be nice if it would also buy your beers and some more?

Over the recent months, a site that can make you big money has really found its audience, from a clever promising idea to an active community of users. I've already mentioned it when it started, and I mentioning it again now because it is getting big: WP Questions.

If you don't know this site, the theory is dead simple: people ask questions and disclose the little amount of money they're willing to offer, experts answer and hopefully win the cash if their answer gets selected.

Since its debuts, the site has gained real traction and what used to be cheap ass $3 questions are now much more interesting little gigs. Interestingly too, there are now coders who completely offloaded their support to WP Questions, such as Ronalfy with his WordPress and Ajax ebook.

Now, for the catchy headline: over the last week, the total amount of cash offered in questions has surpassed $350, with an average nearing $20 per question, and I suspect the trend is on the rise. Of course, it's uncertain you alone will snatch all the money with best answers each time, but that is a very decent pocket change source.

To catch on, be sure to subscribe to the numerous feeds the site offers, or even better, follow @wpquestions. First answers are usually damn fast (under 3 minutes) but the quickest does not always gives the best answer.

(This post is referral free, I blog about it because I like the service. Yet, if you want to do me a favor, you can still register through me)
(Picture by Andrew Magill)

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