Category: WordPress

WordPress makes a move towards hAtom, gets upgrades

WordPress login

I missed WordCamp this weekend (owing to the fact that I was presenting at Wikimania) but there seems to have been some good announcements that came out of the event.

For one thing, the hosted WordPress service added a few features, one of which is a $15 premier service that lets you edit your CSS. Blogger offers this service for free, but heck, WordPress is still independent and needs to have a way to bring in some dough — and as this is a highly desirable feature, will probably lead to income for the Automattic folks at least a fraction of what Cyworld is pulling in with all their custom digital paraphernalia and trinkets.

So but that’s not all… no, Andy Skelton announced (from what I hear) the availability of a new skeleton theme called Sandbox that is designed for themers. If you’re on WordPress.com you can go enable it now, as I have (it’s totally basic, so I imagine that you’ll see a lot of styles start to appear for it) or download it to put on your own blog.

I’ll actually be doing this once I return to San Francisco.

Why?

Simple: Sandbox is the first known theme to support hAtom.

Why does this matter?

The same reason why hResume matters. And then some. It’s because it not only puts more of the power of publishing into the author’s hands, but it also removes the need to RSS or ATOM.

Let me say that again: because the Sandbox theme is marked up with hAtom in its HTML, there’s no need to supply an alternative link to RSS or ATOM because the page itself is able to be read by newsreaders.

Or, will be. In the meantime, we can use Chris Casciano‘s script for NetNewWire to allow client-side subscribing or server-side transforms to convert any page into a subscribable document.

The potential here is immense — if Matt’s able to move the entirety of the WordPress.com theme base over to hAtom, we’d have quite the playground for an HTML-based syndication format, removing the overhead of generating RSS or ATOM feeds. Instead, you’d subscribe to a website and its content, not some anti-DRY format.

Update: Bill Humphries has released a version of Kubrick that supports hAtom.

WordPress 2.0.4 rolls, Veloso joins Automattic

AvalonStarPress

Good stuff over at WordPress, with a security and “stuff” release, and a new addition to the Automattic family: Flockdotcom designer Bryan Veloso (aka AvalonStar).

First project for Bryan: implement Shuttle with support for Canvas.

Oh, and don’t forget to rub elbows at the upcoming WordCamp.

hResume plugin now available

Alex Muse et al have announced the availability of the hResume plugin for WordPress. This plugin will essentially allow you to publish your resume on your own blog using semantic microformatted content so that search engines (like Technorati and eventually other sites like Emurse) can index and offer your resume as a result.

Why is this better than going to Monster.com and others? Well, for one thing, you’re always in charge of your data, so instead of having to fill out forms on 40,000 different sites, you maintain your resume on your site and you update it once and then ping others to let them know that you’ve updated your resume. And, when people discover your resume, they come to you in a context that represents you and lets you stand out rather than blending into a sea of homogeneous-looking documents.

Finally, you’re free to share as much (or as little as you like) and if the data doesn’t fit in their predefined templates, you’ve got nothing to worry about because you’re in total control of your employed (or unemployed) destiny!

On the flip side, Emurse already outputs hResume so if you do want to use an external service to publish your resume (maybe you still don’t have a blog… heh) you feel free to do so. And yeah, it’ll look pretty darn good too.

Pulling back the curtain on Shuttle

Shuttle LogoMatt drops a link to Khaled’s announcement about Shuttle, a long-term project to overhaul the WordPress admin UI.

Looking it over (and as someone who participated from afar some time ago) I have to say that I actually prefer Steve Smith’s WP Tiger Admin. I use it on this blog and love it. There are a few glitches here and there, but for the most part it’s a huge improvement over WordPress’ old school default.

In any case, it’s great to see such major changes coming to WordPress — I just hope that it maintains the original simplicity that makes WordPress so widely successful.

Hullavu Birthday, eh Matt?

AutomatticWell, I have to say, PMatty is turning out to be quite the quintessential capricorn. On the day that he turns twenny-two, he lands a CEO for Automattic, his new WordPress startup.

…Yeah, and not just any CEO… Toni Schneider of Yahoo, OddPost(read: Yahoo Mail), Konfabulator (read: Yahoo Widgets), et cetera and so on.

And speaking of Yahoo, I take it back. Google doesn’t own my life. Turns out (quite to my surprise mind you) it’s a Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo! . . . Yahoo! … world after all. Weird.

Paris Meetup Details

Lizard LoungeLooks like we got ourselves a venue for the all-in-one Les Blogs/Flock/Bar Camp/Word Press/Riya Meetup! So, tonight, Sunday, December 4, 2005 @ 19h05 at the Lizard Lounge (18, rue du Bourg-Tibourg, 75004 Paris). Should be a pretty good crowd, so if you’re in the area stop on by!

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