BizzArtic » Miscallaneus Brain Activity

WordPress 3.3 in Final Stages (beta)

Željan Topić — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 17:36:04 +0000

WordPress, my favourite content management system, is growing and developing faster than ever. I feel it has been just weeks ago, when 3.2 version was last published and here comes another improved version, 3.3. Its first beta has already been released, so lets dive into 10 most anticipated improvements, at least for me.

1. New media uploader (Plupload)

No need to mention that this media uploader feels much better than previous version. Plupload was developed by TinyMCE dev team and is a JavaScript API for dealing with file uploads it supports features, like multiple file selection, file type filtering, request chunking, client side image scaling and it uses different runtimes to achieve this such as HTML 5, Silverlight, Flash, Gears and BrowserPlus. It is well integrated into WordPress and first thing you’ll notice is that you can now drop files into upload section and the rest is handled automatically.

2. Welcome screen on 1st time install and 1st time post-update

This improvement is aimed at WordPress beginners and should encourage them to make their first important configurations correctly. It guides them through the set-up process for the first time and feels much like facebook notes, when new features are available. It’s a very neat feature and I’m looking forward to see API for this, so plugin and theme developers could use it too.

Learn how to use tooltips inside themes or plugins.

3. Improved admin bar

Admin bar has been redesigned from ground up and now feel much more advanced and smooth. The menus now drop down when you hover your mouse over them, saving you more clicks. I’m not a fan of uncontrollable menu behaviour, but this should feel comfortable after a while. The menu has also been re-arranged, with the “Appearance” menu now appearing. Also, if you hover over the WordPress logo there are links to lots of useful places like the support forums and the codex.

4. Performance improvements

Even though previous version got much faster, 3.3 feels considerably faster as well. You’ll notice performance improvements instantly, so browsing through settings and adding new posts should be zippier than ever.

5. Responsive admin

This improvement won’t do much for most WP users, but should bring better and responsive admin design for those with smaller screen sizes, like mobile or iPad. Some of the responsive admin work has been pushed to the 3.4 release but just some simple screen resizing shows the progress has been made. When you shrink down your browser the left admin menu collapses and the dashboard widgets resize. If you’re beta testing you should definitely play around with it.

6. Fly out admin menus

New flyout menus aren’t really per my taste, but once you get used to them, you’ll do everything a bit faster. Previously flyout menus only appeared when the menu was collapsed, but now they appear all the time, which is great. It saves one click on your navigation but when you spend all day working on WordPress those one clicks can add up.

7. Permanent widgets

As my themes and framework is heavily dependent on widgets, this is the most significant update for me. You have probably suffered this setback in the past when you tried to change a theme and out of the blue, all the widgets that you had perfectly organized on the previous theme disappeared. Well, this is going to be fixed in WP 3.3 and now all your widgets will remain from one theme to the next, you will be able to find them on the sidebar of the new theme.

8. Remove admin warnings

The truth is that there are many ways from preventing these messages about upgrades and stuff from showing up, which includes several plugins and hacks, but with this new version you just have to choose that these messages won’t appear from now on. I haven’t found the setting just yet, so it’s probably still under development or sth.

9. Improved Editor API

Post editor uses latest version of TinyMCE, but the code behind it is changed to allow better re-usability of the editor. Right now there are few methods (none of them working well) to have rich editor on the admin page, but with latest changes this should be really easy to do. New WP will have jQuery 1.6.4, jQueryUI 1.8.16 (finally complete version with all components), editor API for easy use of editor anywhere and improvements to scripts enqueue process.

10. Improved `/%postname%/` permalink structure

If you’ve ever used the /%postname%/ permalink structure on your WordPress site (and haven’t we all at some point) then this bit of news will interest you. Not only is that permalink structure is patched and much faster, it’s now a recommended option as well. It usually gives websites a tiny SEO boost, so you might want to check this out.

Learn more about postname permalinks.

Other improvements

Improved Metadata API
Improved Settings API
Admin dynamically display on devices of various screen sizes
Implement language packs for core, plugins, and themes

More News about WordPress 3.3

Download WordPress 3.3 Beta 1

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

WordPress 3.3 in Final Stages (beta)

Improved Security and Faster Website Browsing with CloudFlare

Željan Topić — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:15:53 +0000

For the whole past year, I’ve been experiencing issues with my blog, which you’re just reading – bizzartic.com. It went from hack attacks and pharma hacks to downtimes. As most site owners, I didn’t bother thinking about it, but two weeks ago I experienced a serious security threat, when net bot changed my .htaccess files. Only my front page was visible, with other pages getting 404 error. At that time, I started searching for a better hack proof solution and I think I finally found it. It’s called CloudFlare and it’s really awesome, at least for now. I use it for my blog (bizzartic.com), as well as for bizzthemes.com, my commercial WordPress solution.

What is CloudFlare?

It is a service that does two things for your website: makes it faster and increases it security. This is achieved with a single change to DNS. Your website is instantly protected from a wide range of online threats and it loads much faster, since your content is dynamically optimized across the Internet. And best of all, CloudFlare’s core service is free.

How does CloudFlare work?

It prevents spam bots and website attacks with flawless security tools. Once your website is a part of the CloudFlare community, its web traffic is routed through its intelligent global network system. It automatically optimizes the delivery of your web pages so your visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance.

CloudFlare in 90 Seconds from CF Vimeo on Vimeo.

Stats & Reports Tour Video from CF Vimeo on Vimeo.

Threat Control Tour Video from CF Vimeo on Vimeo.

Always Online Tour Video from CF Vimeo on Vimeo.

How much does ClodFlare cost?

It comes with 3 types of accounts. Free, Pro ($20) and Enterprise (custom price).

CloudFlare Features & Pricing

CloudFlare promises to create your account in seconds and takes just 5 minutes to supercharge your website. All it needs is your email address, a username, password and the plan type you want to take. Once you entered the required fields, click the sign up button.

Learn more about CloudFlare

Learn more about WordPress Website Security

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

Improved Security and Faster Website Browsing with CloudFlare

“Google App Engine, Your Price Hike is Terrible!”

Željan Topić — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:54:50 +0000

Not sure if you knew, but Google decided to leave App Engine preview phase and up the pricing. Not just slightly increase the price, like they do it in Fast Food restaurants, but sky rocket it, like from $9 a month to $270 a month, as this report suggests; or from $2.63 to $34.38 per day, as this user acknowledged.

Image source: http://androidandme.com/2011/09/news/how-google-app-engine-pricing-changes-might-affect-android-apps/

I usually don’t mind price increases, especially if they’re justified and transparent, but this totally blows away my perception of Google as a fair business. They firmly stand on so many issues I can relate to, but using “bait and switch” tactic is so uncool. I understand their current price is too low, but why did they set it so low in the first place? Initially, I thought this was because they simply scale it up on their massive infrastructure, but never though of it as a “bait”.

I can’t imagine how many start-ups this decision will kill, including some of our own projects. There are also thousands of Android Apps, relying on App Engine, so rest assured this price hike won’t end up well. I understand Google is not a public service, but nevertheless, I was hoping their dark cloud wouldn’t rain on us. But, as they say: “After the rain comes sun”, … oh crap, Oracle killed that too.

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

“Google App Engine, Your Price Hike is Terrible!”

Online Business Success Recipe

Željan Topić — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:30:50 +0000

Being three years into online business, I learned quite a lot and I’m glad to be able to share my experience with you. If you think there’s easy money involved, simply turn away and close this page, you’re just a lazy ass if you ask me.

Ingredients

Patience (50%)
Hard work (20%)
Quality (10%)
Speed (10%)

How to mix?

Ridiculous amount of patience is needed and ability to take a lot of punches into your face. So, when you’re down, get up quickly and learn from your mistakes.

There is no such thing as easy money. Only hard work will get you somewhere and there is no money in the world that could buy your pride. You could work hard doing wrong things, so make sure you aren’t wasting your time – but even if you do, learn from it and don’t give up.

You will be tempted to earn quickly, instead, concentrate on quality of your work. Doing one quality project is better than doing hundred of lousy ones. So, if you’re tempted to run online ads on your business website, you already lost your battle.

Even though these tips could apply to offline businesses, there is one variable that is extremely important online – speed. Not speed of your work, but speed of web apps you’re working on. Increasing performance of your apps and websites will bring in thousands of new customers.

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

Online Business Success Recipe

Notepad++, my One and Only Programming Tool

Željan Topić — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 09:23:08 +0000

Last week I had a meeting with a bunch of .NET programmers and noticed they all use Visual Studio for their projects development. As I know .NET to some extend, I know it’s quite hard to code C# with a simple tool like Notepad++, so I somewhat understand their enthusiasm about VS.

I also experimented with Zend a while ago, but always got back to good old Notepad++, here are some reasons why:

It is fast
It doesn’t add any garbage code
I control everything
I know what I’m doing at all times

Notepad++ is great, but has some drawbacks as well:

It’s quite unstable recently
Auto-complete is painful to use
No live full syntax correction
Good replacements are being available

I apologize to all who are not programmers and don’t have any experience in web programming, as this must have been painful to read – especially if you came so far to read this line =)

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

Notepad++, my One and Only Programming Tool

BuddyPress Failed after watching movie, The Social Network

Željan Topić — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:18:17 +0000

Yesterday, I watched a movie, The Social Network, with my buddies. I’d say it’s a very good movie, especially for us – programmers, but very flawed as well. The screenplay was excellent, but portraying Mark as genius, just for coding a simple Friendster copy was a bit too much for me. I understand people are prone to drama and supernatural, but you can’t shoot a movie about real people and make them into geniuses, just because they’re now billionaires. I’m sure Jack Dorsey will be flying like a bird, when they make a movie about Twitter.

Back to the point, BuddyPress, the social network provided by WordPress. Watching the movie, I learned people like social experience on the web, but not always. They love to spy on their friends and people they actually know, but they just don’t care about the others. At the moment, I have the same problem with BizzThemes, where I implemented BuddyPress, in a hope to engage users to communicate with each other – with no success. Why? Because they just don’t care about other community members that have bought premium themes and only want simple support forums that can process their support queries.

The conclusion

I’ll probably remove BuddyPress from BizzThemes and implement simple bbPress support forums instead. I’d also advise all website owners to rethink their social strategy and only offer their own social network, when they plan to engage people who actually know each other. This is why MySpace failed, I’ve failed and you will, if you use BuddyPress just because social is currently in.

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

BuddyPress Failed after watching movie, The Social Network

Competition: Submit Your Site and get Bizz’d up

Željan Topić — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:45:26 +0000

I’m so excited about the flexibility of new framework, I’m willing to clone your current site in 2 days to demonstrate how easy it actually is to make new sites with it. This is a dare move, but I’m very confident about new framework and want to show you that you don’t need to be a WP expert to develop sites for your clients.

Rules

Only simplistic websites or blogs (cloning heavy graphics and features isn’t the point here)
Only sites without explicit content (porn etc.)

What to expect

Customized theme, developed on top of Me’gusta theme
Agency license to receive future framework updates and support
Not pixel-perfect clone, but rather the same grid, colors, fonts etc. – you’ll do the nitty-gritty

How to participate

Comment on this post until November 10th
Submit a valid website URL address and a valid email

After winner is announced, I’ll start coding and will create a permanent link to cloned demo site in 2 business days. Afterwards, I’ll also publish a video, demonstrating my work process in 5 minute screen cast.

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

Competition: Submit Your Site and get Bizz’d up

New Framework Teasers: Part 2

Željan Topić — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:22:53 +0000

Another cycle of development has reached its goal: hierarchical layout engine. Since I started the development process, I wanted to develop a framework that would eliminate any need for custom hard-coded page templates and I’m extremely excited to announce that this is now developed and works like nothing you’ve seen before.

New development opportunities layout engine offers

Develop any page differently from the other
Develop layout for group of pages (Blog,Author,Category archives …)
No custom page templates
No custom template coding
Different widgets for every page

How layout hierarchy works?

If you’re a WordPress developer, you probably understand that there is a hierarchical aspect to every WP theme, which is best seen with http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags (is_home(), is_single(), is_archive(), is_search(), …). This is very useful, when you want to develop a template, that will look differently from others in the same group.

For instance, you want to have the same look for all single blog posts, except for one, which you want to structure differently to highlight its importance. You could develop a custom template or use some conditional tags, but it would take a lot of hard-coding and at least medium level of WP knowledge. This is where new framework steps into place and you become a WP developer in mere seconds – view screen cast below for more info.

… more screen casts to follow during the development process, so make sure you subscribe to this news feed.

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

New Framework Teasers: Part 2

New Theme Framework Teasers

Željan Topić — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:50:13 +0000

I’ve been developing a new theme framework for quite some time now and I think I’m ready to share some of its awesome features with you. From developers perspective, this is a giant step forward, as creating a new theme will now take less than a day if you have a finished design for it. It’s dead simple to use and I’ve not seen anything like it around. Users never get confused as all options are connected to the actual code. Finding the right option inside theme options panel to change slider the slider is history.

Top Features

Creating site grid is simple (similar to registering sidebars)
Unlimited nested grids (columns nested inside columns).
Only widgets (I mean, why the hell some developers use modules? Widgets, modules, the same thing. Why complicating?).
Users may move/drag/drop/open/collapse/enable/disable almost everything.
No save button – everything is saved instantly when you change stuff.
If sth goes wrong, all your widgets are dropped into Inactive widgets section.
Build your front page, archives or any single post/page layout instantly.

Teaser 1: Creating a web grid

Teaser 2: Adding widgets/modules to the grid (ajaxed)

Teaser 3: Moving everything around (ajaxed)

Teaser 4: Open/Collapse everything (ajaxed)

Teaser 5: Enable/Disable your grids (ajaxed)

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

New Theme Framework Teasers

BizzThemes Evolution … into Marketplace?

Željan Topić — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:50:42 +0000

As lots of people have contacted me after I’ve announced this new theme framework, I’ve decided to test the idea of BizzThemes as a marketplace for a limited amount of designers. The idea is to have all themes built on bizz framework, so that designers will only code the styling and other theme specific functions. They’ll also apply their own pricing and will earn most of the share (50-60%). Authors will have to provide some support – the rest will be covered by bizz team.

As this is still just a thought and nothing is final, I’ll test it with a few people and decide from there on. If you’re a designer and think you have skills to design top quality business web sites, drop me an email and we’ll discuss things further: admin@bizzarti.com.

Post from: BizzArtic - Blogging Ideas and Tips

BizzThemes Evolution … into Marketplace?

BizzArtic » Miscallaneus Brain Activity

WordPress 3.3 in Final Stages (beta)

1. New media uploader (Plupload)

2. Welcome screen on 1st time install and 1st time post-update

3. Improved admin bar

4. Performance improvements

5. Responsive admin

6. Fly out admin menus

7. Permanent widgets

8. Remove admin warnings

9. Improved Editor API

10. Improved /%postname%/ permalink structure

Other improvements

More News about WordPress 3.3

Download WordPress 3.3 Beta 1

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Improved Security and Faster Website Browsing with CloudFlare

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How does CloudFlare work?

How much does ClodFlare cost?

Learn more about CloudFlare

Learn more about WordPress Website Security

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“Google App Engine, Your Price Hike is Terrible!”

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Ingredients

How to mix?

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Notepad++, my One and Only Programming Tool

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BuddyPress Failed after watching movie, The Social Network

The conclusion

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Competition: Submit Your Site and get Bizz’d up

Rules

What to expect

How to participate

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Top Features

Teaser 1: Creating a web grid

Teaser 2: Adding widgets/modules to the grid (ajaxed)

Teaser 3: Moving everything around (ajaxed)

Teaser 4: Open/Collapse everything (ajaxed)

Teaser 5: Enable/Disable your grids (ajaxed)

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10. Improved `/%postname%/` permalink structure