One of the scariest things a developer can hear from a new client is the infamous claim: “I know just enough to be dangerous.” Translation: I don’t really know much but I sure love to tinker with things! This always puts up a little red flag in my mind. However, a seemingly harmless bit of tinkering can have disastrous consequences on a live website.

Unfortunately, there are some clients out there who feel more confident about tinkering after they’ve hired a developer to assist with their site. Something gets broken and then the burden of fixing the website is on you. Want to prevent this scenario from happening? Here’s a quick fix:

Disable the Plugin and Theme Editor

Access to plugin and theme code is readily available in the WordPress dashboard. One thing you can do to protect the site from tinkering is to disable the both of these editors. You can do this in under a minute. Open your wp-config.php file and add the following constant:

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define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT',true);

Now, when you’re in the dashboard it is impossible to access the theme or plugin editor, even with the admin account.

Want to take it one step further? The WordPress codex has another gem for your wp-config.php file:

Disable Plugin and Theme Update and Installation

If you really want to lock things down, you can block users from installing/updating themes and plugins through the dashboard. Add this quick snippet to your wp-config.php file:

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define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS',true);

Not only will it prevent users from installing and updating themes and plugins, but it will also automatically disable theme and plugin editing in the dashboard. This constant essentially kills two birds with one stone and saves you from having to mop up a mess later on after your client decides to tinker around with this and that.

For example, let’s say your client decides to start installing plugins like a mad man, but one of them is poorly written, loads an extra copy of jQuery and breaks a bunch of Javascript on the site. Or maybe your client decides to upgrade WordPress before any of his critical plugins or theme have been updated. He ends up with a bunch of broken functionality. These are the types of troubleshooting scenarios we hope to avoid. The solution is to prevent it from happening in the first place by disabling theme and plugin updates.

One note of caution – You should only use these particular constants if you are your client’s sole developer with an agreement to maintain that site. Otherwise, you could be locking your client out of the freedoms that he needs to maintain his own site, should he choose a new developer. In most cases these healthy boundaries will help to keep your client safe from his predisposition to ill-advised and uninformed tinkering.

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos via photopin cc

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With over 65 million sites worldwide, 52% of the top 100 blogs on the web and ~17% of the top million websites out there, it’s the ultimate tale of how a community driven project with a open source free-for-all GPL2 license can beat the big boys and take over the web.

It’s full of derring-do, us vs. them, the open internet versus the proprietary, and personal ownership vs. third party dependence – it’s a lesson in what happens if you ‘do the right thing’.

And at the heart of it there’s the true geek success story Matt Mullenweg, dropping out of college to work on the project he started while barely out of short trousers, who has gone on through founding Automattic to become ‘one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web, and Vanity Fair’s Next Establishment’, to quote from his own site.

It is, without a doubt, Mullenweg who has driven and is responsible for the success of WordPress. Without the backing of Automattic (who contribute, via their staff, an immense amount of $s and hours to the project) and the consequent success of WordPress.com, which has allowed him the funds to start Audrey Capital to employ folk to work directly on the project, it’s almost inconceivable that WP would be where it’s at.

And boy, where is it at! I’d estimate that WordPress is now in a multi-billion dollar economy. In addition to Automattic (valued near Tumblr I’d guess) there’s Envato (can I tip them as Australia’s next billion $ IPO), a dozen or more highly successful theme companies (Woo, $100m anyone?), ourselves (we’re a 40 person team!) and many more… there are also tens of thousands of WordPress developers (44.6k at elance alone) and web development firms worldwide using WordPress.

Which is when things start to get serious, because we are talking thousands of peoples livelihoods here, we’re talking about the need for a level playing field, we’re talking about the danger of anti-competitive practices to that, and we’re especially talking about the danger of power, because you know what they say about power.

WordPress itself is owned by ‘the community’, but let’s not kid ourselves, this is no utopia, let’s see what happens if you try to fork WordPress, it won’t work, it’s not a realistic option and to suggest otherwise is ingenuous, the real power resides in WordPress.org, The WordPress Foundation and Automattic.

And in full control of every one of these is Mullenweg, as Owner, President and Founder respectively. Able to dictate, to his liking and possible competitive advantage who can and can’t use the WordPress Trademark, what the policy of the Foundation is to non GPL providers, who is and isn’t allowed to present at or sponsor WordCamps, who can and can’t sell premium themes on WordPress.com and let’s face it, pretty much anything that does or doesn’t go in the world of WordPress.

While at the same time investing himself in WP companies (through Automattic), and competing directly (through, among over things Akismet, Jetpack, VideoPress, VaultPress) in the marketplace he controls. In fact, Mullenweg even insists that WordPress hosts he deals with install Jetpack, and only Jetpack, by default with their one click WordPress installs, but that’s a post for another time.

Which let’s face it has been annoying enough (especially if you get on the wrong end of it) and has even led the CEO of Envato to publicly stress about “where Automattic ends and the Foundation begins” (respectfully, of course but felt like too much work and pain to get upset about, until today, when after quite a bit of pressure we also discovered that Mullenweg had done the ‘ridiculous‘ thing by buying up leading WordPress news sites Weblog Tools Collection and WP Tavern.

In order to:

“reboot Tavern to be a “third place” for the WP community [and perhaps] roll Jeff’s (and anyone else who is interested) work into some official news resource WP.org”

Yep, that’s right, not content with owning every aspect of WordPress, Mullenweg also wants to control the Press, the discussion and the WordPress news market. I never thought he’d have the gumption, clearly I was wrong.

Regardless of what Mullenweg has been saying about being ‘too busy’ in the last few months to, for example, tweet that he had purchased the sites, or his chilled out attitude to what is happening to the site, new-member-of-staff Jeffro made their intentions crystal clear the other day, the all new Tavern is to be:

“the second largest WordPress community of users and enthusiasts on the web.”

That’s a pretty clear aim, that’s not a ‘oh-someone-else-talked-me-into-it-i-am-not-sure-really’ position, and I for one don’t buy it for a minute.

It’s yet another way in which Mullenweg can control, manage and manipulate WordPress, and something he’s already gone about by maintaining WP Tavern’s preferential treatment in the otherwise rubbish but insanely important Planet.

It’s like Apple buying AppleInsider, Microsoft buying CNET, Google buying Wired… it’s crazy.

Now I’m sure he’ll set himself up as some sort of BBC style character, saying he’ll be impartial, independent and free… but isn’t that what they all say. And unfortunately I’m equally sure you won’t be seeing any coverage of, for example, WPMU DEV or DIY Themes, or anything but love for Automattic’s work. If one of my sources is correct, Mullenweg has a record of quite seriously interfering with at least one WP company he has invested in. I wonder how long it’ll be before that happens here… or if it even has to, after all I’d be tentative about bagging out my boss in public, wouldn’t you?

It’s too much, it’s one step too far, it’s megalomania and micromanagement bundled up in one. It’s an anti-competitive, anti-trust, conflict-of-interest nightmare waiting to happen and an invitation to corruption on an epic scale.

Mullenweg should probably not be as involved as he is in every aspect of WordPress, as long as he also stands to make a fortune out of so many aspects of it, and he should definitely not be in the WordPress news and community space.

After all, as he’s too busy to tweet for months about buying up WP news sites, I don’t see how he could have time for this…

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And it will be hard to miss them – post formats will be smack bang above the editor, all in a neat row of large icons.

Since 3.1, post formats have been a theme feature that allow users to add context to what they post – beautiful photos can be posted as an “image”, a quotation you’ve stumbled across on a site can be posted as a “quote”, a film clip you’ve put together on your smart phone can be posted as a “video”..

Essentially, post formats are a piece of meta information can can be used by a theme to customize how a post looks. Using a theme that support port formats, users can change how each post looks by choosing a post format.

The “Format” box in the current version is not all that inspiring – it’s a small, flat-looking menu of radio buttons. Blink and you will miss them underneath the “Publish” button.

There are now 10 different post types for users to choose from:

• Standard – Just your typical post.
• Image – A single image. You can either upload an image or enter an URL.
• Gallery – A series of images.
• Link – A link to another website.
• Video – A single video. You can upload a video or enter a video embed code or URL.
• Audio – An audio file. Upload a file or paste an audio embed code into the box.
• Chat – A chat transcript. Just copy and paste it into the editor.
• Status – Much like Facebook or Twitter, a short status update.
• Quote – A quotation.
• Aside – A quick thought or idea.

When you click on each post type, rather than a pop-up opening where you can insert a link or image, the UI changes and provides you options. For example, when you want to add audio, the UI will shift to allow you to enter an audio embed code or select audio from your media library.

The biggest change is that now users will have to make a decision about what kind of post they want to publish before they choose a post format, whereas in the past post formats were more of an after thought.

With the new post formats in 3.6, it will be easier than ever to quickly post videos of Ryan Gosling not wanting to eat this cereal!

Now Where Have We Seen This Before…?

The new post formats in WordPress are a lot like those in Tumblr.

When you login to Tumblr the first thing you see is the colorful post formats banner at the top of the page.

The stripped back icons are clear and intuitive to use (just click the post format you want to use and the UI changes so you can insert your images/post/video etc, similar to the new WordPress post formats).

It’s no wonder WordPress is also wandering down this path, as Matt Mullenweg has previously said, he wants to “eradicate some of the complexity that WordPress is usually associated with.”

So is WordPress turning into Tumblr? Well, yes and no… The dashboard is still available and sidebar is still on hand in addition to the post formats banner. The popularity of Tumblr just goes to show how interface simplification is important in the blogging market and WordPress is acknowledging that by borrowing similar post format features from Tumblr.

Credits: huangjiahui

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Of course there are a number of very basic things you can do to help protect yourself:

• Always update to the latest version of WordPress
• Keep your theme(s) updated
• Keep your plugins updated
• Don’t use “Admin” as your administrator login
• Use strong passwords

All of those suggestions are well within your control, of course. But there’s one situation that can throw a wrench into that control. If you have others registering on your site, then they can chose to change their password to one of their own.

Use a Plugin to Force Strong Passwords

In order to address this situation, you can use a plugin such as the Enforce Strong Password plugin.

There aren’t a lot of controls – just the ability to choose the required password strength between 1 and 4. The default is set to 4, and so if that’s good with you, you don’t have to touch anything.

If a user attempts to update their password with one that isn’t strong enough for the plugin, it shows the following message:

If you would like require stronger passwords for only those with a user level of Author and above, then the Force Strong Passwords plugin will do the trick.

Photo: login password from BigStockPhoto

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We’ve put everything we can into this to provide you with a truly professional email newsletter setup, including pretty much everything you could require:

• Super easy setup and configuration
• Beautiful, fully customizable templates
• Along with a great template builder
• Powerful user management (including import)
• User groups & group management
• Detailed informative reports
• Cracking widget interface and behavior
• SMTP much improved
• Add user data to newsletters
• Display emails in browser
• Shortcodes galore
• New hooks to integrate with other plugins
• And much, much more
• With amazing support and usage docs, if you need them

And of course as it’s a WPMU DEV plugin it’s guaranteed to work, guaranteed to be updated and comes with guaranteed support.

Not bad huh Let’s take a look under the hood…

The template builder is just like editing a theme in WordPress, in fact it’s identical

And of course the plugin comes with a bunch of pre-built, gorgeous templates for you pleasure, for example:

And here’s one of my personal favorite features, adding and managing users and groups:

And of course logged in users (for example, on Multisite or BuddyPress installations) can easily manage their email subscriptions via the widget, yum:

And there is so, so much more… in fact here’s that video again if you missed it the first time round, 60 seconds and you’ll be convinced.

We’ve been working on email functionality for WordPress for years, for example there’s Subscribe by Email, Mass Email (old skool MU!), BuddyPress Group Email and Automessage (drip email), but we reckon this is the best of the lot, by a long way.

Download e-Newsletter here, woohoo!

Photo credit: Today is a good day

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The problem a lot of people run into is that they end up assigning too many tags to their posts. This defeats the purpose of tags. If you only end up with one or two posts with that tag, it hardly deserves its own “category.”

As mentioned, tags are somewhat like categories — but just a little more specific. For example, here at WPMU, we obviously don’t think the term “tags” is big enough or important enough for its own category. However, I am going to tag this post “tags” because it seems like an important enough/big enough topic that other posts will also touch on it some significant way.

I’m NOT, however, going to tag this post “merge tags.” That topic isn’t large enough to have a significant number of other posts that talk about that.

To be honest, I might have done that in the past, but we’ve come to realize it’s not really that valuable. And so we’re actually in the middle of cleaning up our “tag problem” by deleting many and merging the rest.

If you’ve got a tag problem too, read on.

How to Merge Your Tags

In order to help you merge your tags, I’m going recommend you use a plugin called Term Management Tools.

Once that’s installed, you’ll need to hop on over to your tag screen (Posts > Tags).

Get Rid of Unused Tags

Probably the very first thing you should do before you start merging is to start deleting. You may find a number of tags will be hard to merge with others. You might also find that somehow you’ve ended up with tags that aren’t assigned to any post at all.

On your tag page, if you click on the “Posts” link on the right, it will arrange your tags by the number of times they’re assigned to a post. I’d start by checking the box for all the ones that say “0” and then using the pull-down menu at the top and deleting them.

Get Rid of “Difficult” Tags

You can then start looking down through your other tags and seeing if there are any you know you can delete right away – i.e. tags that not many posts use and that will be difficult to merge with others. Again, the best candidates here will be the ones that are assigned to only a few posts.

As before, check the box next to the name of the tag, and then use the pull-down menu at the top.

If you have a large number of tags, you may want to increase the number you can see on one screen by pulling down the Screen Options panel at the top and bumping that number up.

Merge Remaining Tags

Assuming you’ve got the Term Management Tools plugin active, you can now get to merging your tags.

Go through your remaining list and check all those that should be merged together into one term.

In my example, I am checking the tag “blue” and the tag “blue things.” From the pull-down menu at the top, I choose “Merge.”

When I choose “Merge,” another box appears just to the right of the pull-down menu. I simply write the name of the tag both of those tags will be merged into. In my case, I’m writing in the name “blue.” But you don’t have to write the name of an existing tag here. You can write the name of a completely new tag.

Click “Apply,” and your tags will be merged.

If you have a lot of tags, this process may take a while, but it will be worth it in the end. It will be better for your users, and you can give up the tag addiction that so many of us are afflicted with.

(Note: Once the job is done, you can delete this plugin from your site. No use keeping unused plugins around.)

Photo: Red Tag from BigStock

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In fact, in good internet fashion, you can see some of the very first stirrings of WordPress in a post where Matt laments that b2 hasn’t been updated in a while, and he’s thinking of splitting off from it. The first commenter on that post is Mike Little saying, “If you’re serious about forking b2 I would be interested in contributing.”

And WordPress was born.

In order to celebrate the occasion, we thought we’d take a look back at these last 10 years. No doubt you will be seeing a lot of “looking back” posts over the next few weeks, going over features that have been added and important decisions that have been made.

But in this post we thought we’d take a different tack. With the help of the Wayback Machine from archive.org, we thought we’d go take a look at how WordPress.org itself has changed stylistically over the years. For those of us who spend a lot of time on the site, it might take us back.

Although it still holds to its roots of uncluttered simplicity today, there have been a number changes along the way. Take a look for yourself.

June 18, 2003

This was the first screenshot we could get a hold of, and so we’ll start here. As the official birthday is in May, and we find ourselves in May now, from here on out we will sample each year from a date in May.

About Page

It might also be interesting to take a look at the first About page for the site. You’ll notice a few interesting things there. One of the more interesting is a mention that the name “WordPress” itself came from Christine Tremoulet of BigPinkCookie.com. (Yes, her blog runs WordPress.)

Utilities?

You might notice an odd menu item there that you aren’t used to – “Utilities.” Here’s what that page consisted of.

By July 29^th, however, the name “Utilities” had been changed to “Hacks.”

Showing Off the Goods

Of course it’s a good idea to show off the wares to potential users, and so screenshots were included. Here’s a look at the first editor:

You can see more screenshots here.

It’s interesting to note that the WordPress.org site these days doesn’t seem to advertise screenshots of the backend. Perhaps because it’s free and easy to install, no look at the backend is really needed.

May 2004

Taking a look at the site the next year, we see a few changes.

Of course one change is the dark, right-side column where WordPress features are highlighted. Another little change is the shadow against the background.

Donate

In the menu, we also see a Donate button has been added. Taking a look at that page, we see a somewhat vague promise of “additional benefits.” OK, not a “somewhat “ vague promise — a completely vague promise.

Screenshots

And we also get a look at the updated editor.

May 2005

In 2005, things look pretty much the same, but we can see by the top menu that a blog has been added and a section to recommend web hosts.

Screenshots

In the screenshots section, you’ll notice that they’ve begun advertising themes in a more upfront way.

One other little note here. You may notice a little banner in the top right-hand corner that WordPress had been named Application of the Year by ArsTechnica. Here’s what they said: “WordPress is the most prominent rising star of weblog software, completely free and with a large and active community. Styles, plugins and hacks are readily available, with problems such as comment spamming being addressed far more rapidly than competing applications.”

And here’s a screenshot of the editor for that time.

May 2006

In 2006 we see a lighter, cleaner look with the removal of the background image. We now also see some navigation on the left. You might also notice the “Donate” button is now gone.

Themes and Plugins

In the menu, you’ll notice the first section for plugins and themes called “Extend.”

If we take a look at the themes section, you can see there were six! And you viewed their thumbnails by scrolling from left to right.

May 2007

No real changes to the homepage this year, and so we won’t include it here. Also, though there was the beginning of a theme directory, by May of 2007, it seems to have been eliminated. However, you can see that the plugin directory had really started to take off.

Year 2008

By 2008, the homepage had taken on a heavier look with a dark gray header area.

Plugins

In 2008 the plugin section had been reorganized (still no theme directory at this point). You’ll also notice some stats:

2,181 plugins, 4,082,686 downloads, and counting

At the time of this writing, those stats stand as follows:

24,897 plugins, 453,551,157 downloads, and counting

May 2009

The next year saw only a few minor changes to the homepage, but you’ll notice a menu item for “Showcase” at the top now – a chance to show off sites out in the public using WordPress. It seems the Showcase was added in the fall of 2008.

By May of 2009, the theme directory was also back … in full force. (Technically it seems to have arrived in 2008.)

May 2010

No major changes seem to have occurred to homepage by May of 2010.

May 2011

By May of 2011 we see a return to a lighter homepage.

May 2012

In May of 2012 we see a few important menu changes. The “Extend” section has been broken out into “Plugins” and “Themes,” but more importantly, we see a sign of the times with an addition of a “Mobile” button.

We can also see that the plugin section has gotten a lot of love in the last year, including the addition of fancy headers, a star rating system, and a more integrated support area.

May 2013

And finally we arrive at today. We see a return to a darker header.

We also see a new menu item at the top called “Get Involved.” This pulls down to reveal a number of different areas of the site where you can learn more about the behind-the-scenes process of putting WordPress together, as well as where you can begin to help yourself.

And so not only do we have to end there, but it’s also an appropriate place to end. WordPress has made it ten years with the help of a lot of different people pitching in from all over the world. If you feel so inclined, and you’d like to see ten more years of improvement, then think about joining in here.

photo credit: camdiluv

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When you browse the code in the default WordPress theme, you have no idea what any of it does and you are running out of time. You need a crash course in the worst way. You need the Naked WordPress Theme.

Learn how to theme WordPress with the Naked WordPress theme

The Naked WordPress theme was created by Joshua Beckman to be “The solution for designers who don’t know WordPress”.

This is not your ordinary bare bones theme, stripped of everything but the essentials. Naked WordPress assumes that you know nothing about WordPress and includes comments on all aspects of the theme. Every single piece of the template files is commented so that you can understand what it does. Armed with that knowledge you can safely rearrange and customize your theme. You’ll be able to remove pieces without worrying about deleting something essential.

Here’s a quick example of just how useful the Naked WordPress theme is for beginners. If you’re brand new to WordPress, you probably have no idea what wp_head() does. Naked WordPress clues you in to how important it is so that you don’t screw things up:

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<?php wp_head(); 
// This fxn allows plugins, and WordPress itself, to insert themselves/scripts/css/files 
// (right here) into the head of your website. 
// Removing this fxn call will disable all kinds of plugins and WordPress default insertions. 
// Move it if you like, but I would keep it around.
?>

With this kind of commenting built into the theme, there’s no need to look things up in the codex when you’re building in a hurry. The functions are neatly summarized and commented inline to save you time.

Naked WordPress features:

• Responsive styling
• Custom menus
• Custom sidebar and widgets
• Blog, with all the WordPress goodies we know and love (comments, categories, tags, etc.)
• Pages, Home page

Check out a live demo by visiting the Naked WordPress homepage. As you can see, it’s nothing but the basics and all the comments are neatly hidden within the php template files, which are not visible to your visitors.

Of course, reading up on the codex and learning all the ins and outs of WordPress theming is highly recommended if you want to be able to expertly navigate it and create your own themes. However, if you’re more interested in designing the theme than building it, then the Naked Theme will help to keep things moving while you’re still learning WordPress. It functions as both a starter theme and a crash course all in one.

Download the Naked WordPress theme for free from its homepage and follow the project on github. If it helps you build something, consider showing a little love to the developer by way of a donation.

photo credit: emanuela franchini via photopin cc

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And of course, from a business perspective I could hardly be more interested… man I’d love to have WPMU.org in there, since the early days it’s been the holy grail of ‘writing about WordPress’ publishing.

But let’s be honest, these days it’s a waste of space, an afterthought, a void and a vacuum, it’s tumbleweed across a deserted dashboard… in short, it’s pants.

And I think, especially with 10 years coming up, it’s about time it was sorted out.

Specifically, let’s:

1. Remove the pointless, non-updated, irrelevant & repetitive stuff (see below for the complete teardown)
2. Add in some of the massive amounts of good stuff out there (see below that)
3. Not let people ‘buy their way’ into it
4. Actually make it work.

So, without further ado…

So, what is the WordPress Planet… and why should I care?

Well, that’s easy, it’s this aggregation of ‘blogs talking about WordPress’, which goes into the dashboard of every WordPress site as ‘Other WordPress News’ [headlines only]

Historically this has been the place where people are supposed to go to to get their WP news, resources, information and increasingly tutorials.

Along with occasional controversy.

It’s included in something stupid like 60,000,000 WordPress sites, by default.

And what’s the policy for inclusion, well it’s pretty simple

This is an aggregation of blogs talking about WordPress from around the world. If you think your blog should be part of this send an email to Matt.

It’s Matt’s list, that’s taken care of that then.

And it’s been stagnant, or worse, pretty much since it’s inception, specifically because of…

Who is on the Planet… should they be?

Here’s the complete list, with my thoughts attached, would be interested in others, I’m by no means the expert in this.

Essentially my criteria is whether these feeds are adding value to a WordPress user by being in there, or not, along with a dash of whether  they are updated and/or any good.

Also, I’m going to take the position that commercial entities shouldn’t be there.

• Akismet - Commercial entity, so no
• Alex King - A mixture of commercial and personal WP GPL stuff, yes
• Andrew - Not updated for over 2 years, no point
• Andrew Nacin - One post in the last year, not really on WP, so nope
• Andy Skelton -  Nothing on WP since 2011, drop
• BuddyPress - BuddyPress, obviously yes
• Dev Blog - Yes, duh
• Donncha - A couple of super cache updates, could just be done in plugin, so no
• Dougal Campbell - 8 relevant posts in the last 12 months is good enough for me, pass
• Gravatar - Hmmm, really, bit like Akismet, for WP accounts, so no
• Jane Wells - Name needs updating, 2 related posts in last year (one much better off on make.wordpress.org), so no
• Joseph - Another Automattician, couple of commercial posts but half a dozen decent relevant WP ones so yes
• Lloyd - Broken feed / site offline
• Lorelle on WP - Makes sense, plenty of news, yes
• Mark Jaquith - Half a dozen relevant ones, so yes
• Matt - Good when relevant, shouldn’t really be *everything*
• Mike Little - Two posts on WP birthdays and one WordCamp announcement in 12 months… naw
• Peter Westwood - Nothing since Jan 2012, begone
• Ping-O-Matic - This is a bit silly, remove
• WP Android (feed) - Unnecessary, surely, wouldn’t one feed, or the dev blog, do it?
• WP Blackberry (feed) - “”
• WP Nokia (feed) - “”
• WP Windows Phone 7 (feed) - “”
• WP iPhone (feed) - “”
• WPTavern (feed) - I’d say no, given their new ambitions and shady context (more on that below)
• Weblog Tools Collection (feed) - Just been sold to a new buyer, who knows if they are trustworthy, remove please (see below)
• WordPress.tv (feed) - Makes sense
• WordPress.tv Blog (feed) - Really, do we need it twice?
• bbPress (feed) - Of course
• mdawaffe (feed) - Half a dozen posts since 2005, dunno why this is even here, remove

Results:

Keep = 10
Remove = 20

Ooo, controversial, so why no WP Tavern or WLTC?

As I mentioned above, both are now folded / retired / rebirthed and both now owned by unknowns, or maybe the same unknown!

And in the ultra-competitive space of WordPress publishing (we’re all doing this for a reason, let’s not kid anyone, advertising, WPMU DEV, other revenue streams, our egos…) both are gaining a massive commercial and competitive advantage over other sites in the space.

Surely that shouldn’t be for sale? It just doesn’t seem right.

And I mean, wannabee Valleywag WP Candy was included and then taken out again (for being basically pants too, I think). So it’s not like these things aren’t done and considered. I wonder when and/or why the chap upstairs removed them.

I’d say that until WLTC demonstrates if it’s going to get back on its feet and start doing good WP stuff, then it shouldn’t be included.

And that WP Tavern should probably also be put on probation, at least until we know who is behind it and what their motives are… as well as asking whether it’s covering or offering the kind of stuff we are after.

And who should replace them?

Because there are a lot of excellent sites about WordPress out there, and not in the Planet, that are far, far better.

Obviously WPMU would provide a completely non commercial feed if asked, but we’re not going to be, so that being said I reckon that, we should see:

• WP Daily – John’s transparent enough and doing a good enough job to warrant inclusion
• WP Mail – A web version of this should absolutely be included, it’s the best aggregation (alongside WP Daily’s) of what’s going on
• Smashing Mag WP Section – Great, detailed, quality, in-depth articles, why on earth not?
• WP Tuts + – Clearly Envato are back in the good books, having 1% GPL products is enough, yay, why not give ‘em a slot

And also…

• WP Lift – Why not, they give it a good crack
• WP Beginner – Always good quality
• WP Mayor – Doing a good job
• Chris Lema – Bit more commercial, but worth it

In my opinion these sites all offer fantastic, regular, fairly unbiased and mostly non commercial useful news, information and resources about WordPress… why not make that the criteria and shake up the Planet a bit.

How does that sound? Got any other suggestions, leave ‘em in the comments.

And while we’re at it…

How can we make The Planet actually work?

Well, howabout we stop thinking about it as an afterthought.

With as many people using WordPress as there are currently are, why can’t Matt / Automattic / The WP Foundation / The Community actually get it right on WordPress.org and in WP dashboards the world over.

Let’s start with removing the fluff and bringing in the good.

And then let’s let (or pay, in $s or links) Christian and Bianca curate it – and make it a proper big deal… not just an item in the dashboard (although we can keep that) but a weekly notification in the WP backend (easily turned off) that says…

Let’s celebrate the wonderful World of WordPress news, let’s not hide, it’s a huge strength.

And last, but not least, let’s make an editorial code for the setup and a board to enforce it, something like:

• Strictly non commercial work, not promoting any one product (products must be reviewed)
• Fair and unbiased
• No affiliate stuff ever, whatsoever, under any circumstances
• No advertising within posts (only on your own site)

And anything else you can think of.

It’s not rocket science, it’s just making some effort and doing it properly.

What say you?

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Checking through each site on your network to see what plugins are in use is simply not an option. The task is much too tedious for a busy site admin like yourself. That’s where Plugin Activation Status saves the day. It essentially performs a plugin audit so that you can get rid of any extra baggage.

Find and dump all your unused plugins

When you first activate the plugin, you’ll see this screen with an empty list, located at Network Admin >> Plugins >> Active Plugins.

Click continue to generate the lists. Don’t do this during peak traffic time if you have a massive network as it might cause slow downs.

Plugin Activation Status will produce two lists:

• A list of plugins that are not currently active on any sites or networks
• A list of plugins that are active somewhere within the installation, accompanied by details of where and how those plugins are activated

The most useful feature of this plugin is that it quickly lets you know how many plugins you can safely dump. You can also examine the plugins that are used on only a few sites to see if there are any among those that you could also get rid of, much like cleaning out your closet. New lists can be generated on demand as often as you want to clean out your network plugins.

Please note that this plugin is only for multisite networks, as it does not make sense for single site installs.

A good WordPress admin must clean up after himself.

Installing plugins just to try them out and not deleting them is a nasty habit. Sure, you’re in a hurry, but later on you’ll forget why you added those plugins and wonder if you’re really using them. Removing unused plugins is an important part of multisite maintenance. You’ll be able to see issues more clearly when troubleshooting if you have fewer plugins active, minimize security risks and keep your site leaner. Install Plugin Activation Status and it will tell you exactly which plugins you can dump for spring cleaning.

photo credit: atibens via photopin cc

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