Category: How It Is

Making philosophy about the why behind technical things.

You Can’t Be Everything

There’s no app out there that does everything.

A lot of you just said ‘I know.’ but did you ever stop to think about why that’s the case? After all, some applications do everything you need them to do, and some you don’t, so who gets to decide what is and isn’t needed? When I talked about how WordPress was just fine on it’s own, without any plugins, people stepped up and said “But Ipstenu, I really need XYZ.” Heck, Lorelle said she needed Akismet.

Learning how to separate your personal needs from the needs of the masses, when writing software, is a full-time job, and many of us come at it from a slant-wise point of view. In fact, writing core code for WordPress is in diametric opposition to why we write plugins! While I’m going to talk about it from a WordPress point of view, the concept holds true to any application that has ‘add ons.’

Plugins are written, by in large, to solve a specific problem. They’re not ‘fixing’ WordPress, they’re expanding. Remember, your iPhone wasn’t broken until it had Angry Birds, nor was your iPad incomplete without Twitter. Those are things you wanted, and solved a problem for you. The base tools, in and of themselves, address a broader group of people, with a diverse set of needs, and have the option of being everything or nothing.

The best tool, WordPress, your computer, etc, are built to be extendable. They’re built with the innate knowledge that the users may want things they can’t forsee. Five years ago, how many of you thought Google+ or Twitter would be a ‘thing’? Let’s take that further. You know how when a new video game comes out, sometimes you can’t play it on your older computer? That’s because it wasn’t built with the new game in mind, so it’s just not capable. And that’s why computers generally let you upgrade memory, CPU, and hard drives. They are built to be extendable becuase they know they can’t know the future.

Bringing it back to WordPress, it was built to meet a need. People wanted to blog, they wanted it to be easy and they wanted it to just bloody work! So the Matts said ‘This is what we want’ and built it. Thankfully, they understood that people wanted to extend WordPress. But not at first. Oh you didn’t know? Back in December 2003, a ‘new feature’ was introduced called my-hacks.php, which let you put a file by that name in the root of WP, and it would treat it like a functions file. In fact, that’s why I call my non-plugin code ‘hacks.’ Heck, we didn’t get pretty permalinks until January 2004 (then called ‘cruft free’ URLs).

The point of this is not to expose the funny looking beginnings, but to demonstrate the nature of the software. As it grew, people had needs, and instead of writing everything into core, they cleverly changed WordPress so it was extendable and let people grow as they needed. So when we talk about things like needs and wants, we do it in the understanding that we write our software to fill a need, and we make add-ons to fill wants. Sounds like double speak, I know, but that’s why I said plugins and core development are in direct opposition.

When I want to add things to core, I want them to be useful to everyone, so I’m forced to remove my ego from the equation. Looking at the (few) core submissions I’ve made, I carefully thought them out beforehand. I looked at places were the user experience was inconsistent or diminished. When I make suggestions or offer commentary to what I think could be better, I try to show my passion without acting like a teenager’s first big crush, or a screaming fangirl meeting her heroes.

This isn’t to say I don’t think passion is a part of the driving force of any product, but that it must be tempered and controlled in things like WordPress core. We know that we can’t make WordPress core do everything, and we know we shouldn’t. When things are extendable, we utilize that and demonstrate our fire. When they’re difficult to extend, or kludgy to implement, we come back and say ‘You know, it would be nice if we could…’ But at the end of the day, when WordPress tags your trac ticket ‘wontfix,’ it’s because they know, being unable to be all things, that they must limit the things they are.

If you haven’t yet, take the time to read WordPress’s Philosophy.

When I usually talk about divorcing my ego from a project, what I mean is that I don’t let my passion cloud my better judgement. One of the lessons I’ve learned in nearly 20 years of active fandom is that when you love something, you get fired up about it, and you tend to view peoples opinions and actions as a personal attack when, in fact, they often aren’t. Yes, there are idiots and trolls and people who hate-monger, but in general, people actually aren’t dicks. They’re selfish and self-centered, but that’s just human nature. Part of designing a project means you have to let go of your personal attachment to your baby, and understand that haters are just gonna hate, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

This also applies to using a tool, though. People mock the evangelists, and we all hate the extremists, and certainly no one actually supports those who are outright malicious. But all those archtypes come part and parcel with a system, and are all aspects of the simple problem that no one product can do all the things. We want things to be a silver bullet, to fix everything we, personally, have a problem with, and we’re totally unrealistic in wanting that.

Mark and I were talking recently, and he pointed out that WordPress was once 230kb. It’s now 3.8megs, even zipped up. Part of this is because it all grew and became more, but if you ask the old-timers, some will complain that around the 1.5 days, WordPress just became too big. It does too much! And those people say we should pull things like the importer out of WordPress. After all, you’re going to use it once, if at all. Core plugins would get pretty big too. Jetpack is 2.4megs on its own, zipped up. By trying to be everything, maybe we’re making things a little worse.

So the next time someone gets their panties in a bunch at you for not doing everything, tell that it’s by design. Do what you want with your code, make it easily extendable for the next guy (or forkable), and carry on. They’re not getting that unicorn.

30 May, 2012
Permalink Elephants
The best permalink format for your site is so simple, you’re going to wonder why you never thought of it before. It’s obvious, intuitive, and perfect. In fact, I dare say it’s genius. Want to know what it is?

The best permalink is the one your visitors can remember.

I told you it was obvious.

Look, you can waste immesurable hours and days trying to determine if /postname/ is better than /2012/postname, or you can sit down and remember you’re not making a site for search engines, but for your visitors.

SEO does have a point, don’t get me wrong. If it’s easy for people to find your site, you get more traffic. One of my sites, following the recent Panda and Penguin updates on Google, jumped from 5th place to 3rd on a search for the major keyword. Another went from 12th to 9th (we’re working on that). None of that has to do with me changing anything, or even picking the best SEO plugin. It was done the traditional way.
1. I wrote good copy
2. I networked with related sites for links
3. I advertised
4. I was memorable
Those three things, when done correctly, are how you get your site to rank high. And it’s that last item, being memorable, that should drive your URL choices.

A URL like http://example.com/12897342134/jkahsdu.aspx isn’t memorable. It tells me nothing of what your site’s about, what the topics are, what the subject is.

On the other hand, a URL like http://example.com/2011/how-to-save-elephants tells me quite a bit. I know when the post was written, so if there was a big to-do about elephants in 2011, it probably is related. But it’s not always easy to tell someone that URL, nor is it a given I’ll remember it tomorrow. I may remember that example.com had a cool posts about saving elephants, however. It’s certainly more likely I’ll remember it than the other link!

This is where WordPress does something cool, though. See, I can tell someone to go to http://example.com/how-to-save-elephants/ and that will redirect them to the right URL! You can do this on Drupal as well with a module called Global Redirect (Drupal folks, correct me if I’m wrong/there’s a better one).

To me, that says the issue isn’t what permalink pattern you pick, but what permalink slug you use! On that train of thought, what if I made my URL http://example.com/2011/save-elephants instead? Naturally then http://example.com/save-elephants would also work.

Now we can clearly see that ultimate issue is not the permalink structure. The only thing I don’t like about how WordPress defaults URLs is that I have to tell people ‘it’s example dot com slash save dash elephants’ and that’s not as easy as ‘example dot com slash elephants.’ Or even ‘saveelephants, all one word’ (I don’t know why that’s easier, but people tell me it is).

The whole reason people like short URLs is that they’re short and easier to remember. If I told you to get to a site you used http://bit.ly/elephant, you’d have a much higher likelihood of remembering. Invariably, however, we look at branding and think “I don’t want bit.ly to have my name.” That’s a case for Yourls, and now, as long as you customize all your Yourls, you’re in it to win it. I know most people use short URLs for Twitter and such, but I find that making a handy short URL to tell someone ‘go to foo dot in slash facebook’ works astonishingly well. Of course Facebook knows that too, and lets you use http://fb.com/username to find people.(I don’t have a yourls setup here because I’m incapable of finding a short URL I like.)

Sadly, there is one problem with this, and it’s that you can only use each ‘slug’ once, so once you’ve use ‘elephant’ you’re never able to use it again.

Name your slugs wisely and plan, as best you can, for the future.
21 May, 2012
WordPress 3.4 – No Problem

It’s in beta, don’t nobody panic.

The last 3 releases of WP, I’ve made troubleshooting posts about what to do, what plugins are going to barf, and so on. This time, there really doesn’t seem as much to worry about. Of course, having said that, everything will die in a fire. Actually, though, I haven’t made a list of things yet, because there’s nothing to list. I’ve not run into any stand out ‘Oh shits!’ and the forums are remarkably quiet. So. If you’ve got stupid problems, or found you have to edit themes/plugins, please reply and let me know! I’ll get on it.

So here’s some of the cool new stuff:

Akismet 2.5.6

Custom Headers and Backgrounds — See also Flexible Headers in 3.4 Themes and Backwards Compatibility for WP 3.4 Headers and Backgrounds

Twitter was added to oEmbeds — This should just work out of the box, but if you have a plugin (like Blackbird Pie), you may want to disable it before upgrading.

RPC-XML support for Custom Post-Types.

~~Admin~~ Toolbar To The Top! Click on any blank space in the admin bar and you go to the top of the page. (It’s the toolbar, damn it, I know this!)

Sexier Theme Options. Have you ever wanted to see what the changes did to your theme on the fly? Go to WP Admin > Themes and click on Customize Theme to get a quick way to see what you’re tweaking. Not every option is there, nor will every option be added, but this is pretty nice!

You also get that view when you preview a theme.

Of note, Twenty Twelve and Favicons got punted to 3.5.

Edited to add…

Jane Wells has a nice write up of some of the new stuff. It’s on .com, but a lot of this (all) is on 3.4 too. What? You didn’t know .com used the same (mostly) WordPress we do?

17 May, 2012
Storify oEmbed
Of note, this no longer appears to work. It’s been almost 2 years. Not shocked. Embedly has a plugin though. http://wordpress.org/plugins/embedly/

I was reviewing a plugin that went the long way around for this (similar to how things work on my Rickroll plugin, with a search/replace).

You would think this is easier:
```
// Add Storify oEmbed
function add_oembed_storify(){
    wp_oembed_add_provider( 'http://storify.com/*', 'http://api.storify.com/v1/stories/');
}
add_action('init','add_oembed_storify');
```
But even though there’s a nice API, it won’t work. Why not? Because Storify doesn’t have it’s own oembed provider. Boo. Instead you have to use something like embed.ly
```
wp_oembed_add_provider( 'http://storify.com/*', 'http://api.embed.ly/1/oembed?url=http://storify.com/');
```
Then you put http://storify.com/dailydot/betty-white-joins-twitter in your post and it shows a story.

Example:

http://storify.com/dailydot/betty-white-joins-twitter
16 May, 2012
Lesson #1373 – Learning

All the help I give on all the forums and various places works using this maze. I can tell you, but then you won’t learn anything.

There’s more than one path to knowledge; it’s not always the same knowledge once you get there, either. But if you think it was easy to get there, you’re not at the destination you think you’re at.

Credit: Surviving the World

4 May, 2012
You Don’t Need Any Plugins

Lorelle said it right when she said there were no plugins she couldn’t live without (except Akismet), and you could even do without Akismet if you turn off comments. She hit the nail right on the head as to why I step out of any ‘What plugin/theme should I use?’ discussions, except when someone asks a specific ‘What plugin should I use to do this…’ version there of.

Out of the box, WordPress has all the major tools you need to start publishing. Turn on Akismet and you are good to go. What happens next is up to the needs and goals of your site.

Out of the box, WordPress needs nothing. It works just fine as is, and you don’t need to do a blessed thing to it. But you want to. And that’s where it all gets messy.

Needs and wants are different things, and few of us need everything we have installed on our sites. I have 27 plugins currently installed on my network. Of those, three are ‘mu-plugins’ that aren’t so much plugins but sitewide functions, nine are network activated, and one is Hello Dolly. I average about 10 of the others per site, and I know that at least Hello Dolly is actually not used at all. Some sites are the only one to use a certain plugin (like the ‘Downloads’ plugin I use here), and others aren’t network activated but are used on many sites (like WordPress SEO and W3TC).

Even here on my network, I have different tools for different sites. Heck, one site has only one additional plugin activated on it!

So when you look at all that, you may wonder if there’s a plugin I can’t live without. The answer is a flat out no, but you’re not asking the right question.

What you need to ask is What features are required for my site?

When someone tells me they want help with their site and what plugins should they use, I tell them “You need to make a list of what features you need. Not want. Need.” There’s a huge difference between the stuff you want, to make your site look cool and neat, and the ones you require for the desired functionality. What a website needs is a way to display content in an easily absorbed way.

People forget the purpose of a website is for people to find your stuff, read it, and help spread the word. Now, if your ‘word’ is videos, then yes, you totally should consider a video plugin. But that’s a need, not a want. A ‘want’ for a video site is a fancy slideshow of New Videos. Look at YouTube, though. They don’t do that. YouTube knows they’re going to get a lot of traffic, so they pull things back to their purpose. They want to show videos, that’s all they do. Obviously they added in a couple wants, which are the ability to comment, vote, favorite etc. Those are pretty minor when you get around to it, in so far as they don’t affect site speed as much as the actual videos do.

For most blogs, you really don’t need plugins. If you pull your site back to the things you must have, you get a better understanding of what your site is. Once you look at your site ‘naked,’ with no plugins at all, you can start to add plugins back in.

Each and every plugin I add has to serve a purpose. Even my RickRoll plugin has a purpose (though its not something that would be on every site I make). The point of a plugin is not ‘Oh look, this is cool!’ but ‘How can it serve me best?’ If I can’t come up with a reason this makes my site better, and I am brutal with myself, I don’t use it.

If you’re going to have a website, it’s incumbent on you that you’re mean to yourself. You hear the horror stories of clients who want all sorts of crazy things on their sites, and there’s a reason a lot of us sit and laugh (and cry) when we read the Oatmeal’s How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell. I push developers to fight back against the crazy, but you clients need to step up and understand that ‘more’ isn’t ‘better,’ and if you’re hiring someone to make a site, you really should listen to their suggestions and recommendations.

But the point in the end is that, to make a website, with WordPress, you need no plugins. What you want is another matter.

30 April, 2012

Category: How It Is

You Can’t Be Everything

Permalink Elephants

WordPress 3.4 – No Problem

Storify oEmbed

Lesson #1373 – Learning

You Don’t Need Any Plugins