This piquant thread on Twitter made my week: http://storify.com/Jtsternberg/conversation-with-nacin-simpledream-zamoose-johnpb
I love the global nature of the WordPress, and how the community can come together for something silly and fun on Twitter.
ÉPICÉ!
Sometimes you hear a story that grounds you and reminds you about the reasons you chose your profession. Why it all matters. This is one of those.
Paul Clark’s presentation at WordCamp Phoenix did just that. A must-watch.
Discover how the freedom and flexibility built into WordPress empowers relief teams working in war zones in Southeast Asia. We will explore the challenges faced and strategies used to create an application that tracks medical care and human rights abuses in the jungles of Burma. The power behind Custom Post Types and the Pods Framework enables doctors and relief workers to make critical data-driven decisions when treating 15,000 patients each year. Come see how you can use the same tools to power maps, charts, and interactive timelines in your own WordPress plugins and themes.
Video: Paul Clark: How WordPress Saves Lives – Freedom, Hope and Custom Post Types.
Thanks for the inspiration, Paul.
An excellent presentation by Natalie MacLees at WordCamp Phoenix 2013: Setting up a WordPress Site the Right Way. Highly recommend to anyone starting out with WordPress.
Pre-order now: http://cyclingkit.wordpress.com/interested/. Yes, please.
I’m attending and speaking WordCamp Phoenix 2013, and for my second year in a row presenting on themes in the Jumpstart track as part of the Saturday schedule. The conference is Friday Jan 18 through Sunday January 20.
If you’ll be at WordCamp Phoenix please say hello — let’s talk some WordPress, Arizona.
Update: Video is now up on WordPress.tv: http://wordpress.tv/2013/01/31/lance-willett-finding-the-perfect-theme/.
In case you missed it, the ThemeShaper WordPress Theme Tutorial: 2nd Edition is alive. Your favorite theme tutorial updated with new tools, new code samples, and new lessons.
http://ma.tt/2013/01/2012-at-automattic/
Would you like to get involved?
Extra! Extra! The latest WordPress release is fresh off the presses.
If you’ve been around WordPress a while, the most dramatic new change you’ll notice is a completely re-imagined flow for uploading photos and creating galleries. Media has long been a friction point and we’ve listened hard and given a lot of thought into crafting this new system. 3.5 includes a new default theme, Twenty Twelve, which has a very clean mobile-first responsive design and works fantastic as a base for a CMS site.
Did you read that right?! Yes. New media flow. Totes awes, batpeople. There is much more in this release but that alone should be enough to make you go update to 3.5 right this moment. WPCandy has a nice run-down of what’s new in 3.5. (Note: if your site is on WordPress.com you’ve been using this for a few weeks already. You are a future-living geek and didn’t even know it.)
Twenty Twelve is a WordPress theme I’ve been working on for over 9 months, and yesterday it finally launched for everyone via the WordPress.org themes directory.
The theme was designed by Drew Strojny, with a mobile-first approach using responsive design techniques. The result is an elegant, beautiful, and readable theme that looks great on any device. If you’re interested in more about the design, Drew blogged about it over on The Theme Foundry and I also highly recommend watching his overview of the process, presented with humor and wit: How not to design a default theme.
Joining the team in July 2012, Konstantin Obenland contributed many hours of testing, code changes, and expertise. Self-described as a perfectionist and a native of Germany, his keen eye was crucial to nail down all the edge cases and make sure the theme works well for all users. Read Konstantin’s story.
Many more people contributed to bug reports, testing, theme-breaking, documentation. It takes an army to launch a new version of WordPress, and a new default theme is no exception. At the WordCamp San Francisco 2012 hack day, 17 contributors joined me during one of the most efficient and amazing group hack days I’ve been a part of. Looking at the photos from the event you’ll see the energy of the day.
If you’re interested in more of the philosophy behind default WordPress themes—and why they are named after the year (Twenty Ten, Eleven, Twelve …) read Why Default Themes Change Each Year.
And for history’s sake, the core Trac ticket that kicked it off: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/19978.
I hope you enjoy Twenty Twelve as much as we enjoyed making it.
Thank you to Sheri Bigelow for the photos of WCSF 2012.
Forge is a tool for quickly developing a WordPress theme built by the fine folks at The Theme Foundry.
Forge is a free command-line toolkit for bootstrapping and developing WordPress themes in a tidy environment using front-end languages like Sass, LESS, and CoffeeScript.
During the early development process of this year’s default theme for WordPress, the Twenty Twelve team—Drew Strojny and myself—used Github and Forge to build the theme (view the archived source).
I would like to share my thoughts on using Forge during this process now that the theme is back in the core WordPress environment: Subversion and Trac.
In summary: Forge is too restrictive for general theme develpoment.
