Tag Archives: automattic

What I Like (And Dislike) About WordPress 3.0

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A couple of weeks ago WordPress (the software that powers this site), popped up a notification that version 3.0 Thelonius was ready to download and install. I held off on the upgrade for a while because of  many problems I have had upgrading from version to version with WordPress. I have to admit though I was very pleasantly surprised with the ease of the installation. I simply hit upgrade, entered my ftp information and waited for it to think. A little less than a minute later, I was running WordPress 3.0. It was absolutely amazing, there were no problems, it just worked. This was a great change from version upgrades before, many times they have broken compatibility with lots of plugins (WordPress 2.8 for example) and broken the theme. This time, all of my plugins worked, the theme worked and there was absolutely nothing that needed changing at all. What I found incredible is that they were able to combine WordPress Multiple User directly into WordPress 3.0. On my one internal testing site (on localhost), I was able to update directly from WPMU to WP 3.0 also with no problems.

WordPress 3.0 ships with a new theme called TwentyTen. Kubrick (which has been the default theme for a while) has finally been replaced with something that is fully compliant with Web 2.0 standards and looks amazing. The only reason that I’m not using it myself is because while it is an amazing theme, it isn’t “techie” enough for my liking. It’s still a great theme, but I probably won’t be using it, at least not for this site.

However, as amazing as WordPress 3.0 is; it still (like everything) has it shortcomings. Namely compatibility with BuddyPress 1.2.4.1. While the basic install of BuddyPress is still as easy as ever, the combination with bbPress is broken again. Now attempting to enable the bbPress portion of BuddyPress results in a bb-config.php being created, no database tables being created, and an overall total mess. Basically the forums function is completely broken and this makes a large portion of BuddyPress and by extension WordPress useless. This is a rather large bug and whether it is with WordPress 3.0, BuddyPress 1.2.4.1 or with the version of bbPress included in the BuddyPress install, it needs to be found and fixed quickly.

Automattic is rather good at putting out bugfixes and I’m sure that once they know about it, they and the full team of Open Source Developers behind WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress will patch this bug and everything will be working again. It will just take a little bit (more) time!

Why I Switched Back to Intense Debate for Comment Management

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Previously, I wrote Why Intense Debate Still Isn’t Ready for WordPress Use! Since then, my view on Intense Debate has changed. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always been a big fan of Automattic’s attempts to combine user accounts between various services allowing us as blog holders to simplify the number of logins we need to remember. Nearly two months back, Intense Debate attempted to add themselves to the Autommatic “account combined” list.

It had mixed success because while it allowed those of us with WordPress.com accounts to comment through Intense Debate, we still had two profiles. There was an Intense Debate profile and a WordPress.com profile. This created confusion because we now had two accounts instead of just the one that we were supposed to. The intentions were to fix this soon, but it still hasn’t happened. Here’s why it affected me:

I decided to try out Intense Debate myself to see if it would fit the needs of this site. I ended up creating a new Intense Debate account, not realizing that I could just sign on with my WordPress.com login and password. I linked this site to and my comments synced perfectly with Intense Debate. Then of course, I read this post and decided that I wanted my Intense Debate profile to be the same as my WordPress.com one. Of course, I deleted my Intense Debate account and then reset the plugin. I tried to connect it to my “new” account but of course, it wouldn’t let me do that. It seems that you need to disconnect your WordPress blog from Intense Debate before deleting or switching accounts. Now I’m stuck, without Intense Debate. My hope is, that when the merger goes through properly, they will realize that my orphaned blog belongs to my WordPress.com account and attach the two together. That would save a lot of hassle for all of us who don’t read directions properly before beginning.

Since then, Intense Debate support have looked into my accounts and have combined the two of them under my wordpress.com account and I no longer have two accounts, 🙂 They believe that all other accounts should be combined by the end of the year, which with the volume of accounts they have is understandable.

So, here I am: running Intense Debate again except this time with only 1 account!

Why Intense Debate Still Isn’t Ready For WordPress Use!

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Intense Debate is definitely one of the best debate/comment systems out there. There’s no question of that here! Automattic has done a brilliant job with Intense Debate but it still needs a lot of work. I love the fact that one Intense Debate account allows you to login to many different sites to post comments because of their diverse and widespread plugins for many different platforms. It certainly is easier to users and to webmasters because they don’t have to worry about pruning for spam and checking on their spam plugins. Sure, a webmaster still needs to look into those but with Intense Debate, the pruning is all handled by them and not by you. The time needed to clean up the spam is greatly reduced.

I for one was very excited when Intense Debate announced WordPress.com Sign In. I don’t know if you have noticed but Automattic has slowly been implementing that across all of their platforms. However, across their other platforms, they have also included account mergers, merging accounts between services with the WordPress.com account with identical email addresses. That is where they really shine. I’ve had a WordPress.com account for a while, because I needed the API Key for Akismet. I’ve also had a Gravatar because I love not having to set my avatar up on every site I start up. Late last year, they merged the databases of Gravatar with WordPress.com and my two accounts became connected. There was no longer a disconnect.

However, the Intense Debate implementation failed in this context. Account Mergers are not possible at this time. The Intense Debate Team said:

If you already have both IntenseDebate and WordPress.com accounts, don’t worry – we will be merging your accounts in the next phase of our integration, so keep commenting!

That’s good, it means that integration is coming but it’s still not quite ready for mainstream use. Let me give you my own story.

I decided to try out Intense Debate myself to see if it would fit the needs of this site. I ended up creating a new Intense Debate account, not realizing that I could just sign on with my WordPress.com login and password. I linked this site to and my comments synced perfectly with Intense Debate. Then of course, I read this post and decided that I wanted my Intense Debate profile to be the same as my WordPress.com one. Of course, I deleted my Intense Debate account and then reset the plugin. I tried to connect it to my “new” account but of course, it wouldn’t let me do that. It seems that you need to disconnect your WordPress blog from Intense Debate before deleting or switching accounts. Now I’m stuck, without Intense Debate. My hope is, that when the merger goes through properly, they will realize that my orphaned blog belongs to my WordPress.com account and attach the two together. That would save a lot of hassle for all of us who don’t read directions properly before beginning.

Therefore Intense Debate isn’t quite ready for WordPress use. It’s very close and it’s getting closer, but there is still a short ways to go. Once they manage to complete the merger, I for one will be quite pleased with them. I’m just hoping the “next phase of [their] integration” happens soon!

New bbPress Admin Updated!

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New bbPress Admin was officially updated last week to version 2.0. This adds a lot of stability along with a few other functions. The changelog details more…

—————————- Changelog: —————————-

2.0

  • Second Version of bbPress Admin. It has been adapted to have a backend interface to set the forums directory.
  • Looks Neater and is much easier to use.
  • Works with WP/WPMU 2.8.2 and bbPress 1.0.1

1.0

  • First Version of bbPress Admin. It is very simple and rudimentary at this point.
  • Working with WP/WPMU 2.8.1 and bbPress 1.0.1

You can find the plugin at it’s homepage. Right now Version 2.0 is stable however there are a few small bugs that are being worked on! Version 2.1 is in BETA on SVN!

Additionally, the homepage of New bbPress Admin has been updated so that it shows the most recent information (almost identical to the information on the http://wordpress.org plugin page.

WordPress Changes Guidelines for Plugin Authors!

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Taken from here:

We feel that all software should have a changelog that details, at a high level, what changes have been made in each version so that the user can make an informed decision about when to upgrade and how much testing they should do with their site.

In order to make this an easy and open communication channel we have added support for a Changelog section in the plugins readme.txt file.  This changelog information is then displayed as a separate tab in the plugin directory and also in the back end of your WordPress blog when you view the details on a new version of a plugin.

I personally agree with this decision of the Automattic and the WordPress team because I have found some annoying plugins which don’t state why a plugin is updated. This should solve that problem rather nicely!

Just got Gravatar!

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I just got a gravatar and have found that it works perfectly with my blog (this site) with no plugins or anything needed! I have to say, I’m very impressed with the gravatar system from Automattic (makers of wordpress) and just wanted to state that if you don’t have a gravatar go get one from www.gravatar.com.

Just a quick update 😀