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You just don’t need a magazine theme

Magazine themes are quite alluring. Sliders, pictures, columns, unique blocks of different content on demos. But beyond the perfectly crafted demo marketed to entice you to purchase what you’ve convinced yourself you must have, you probably don’t need it at all.

I’m willing to bet almost no content driven website actually needs a “magazine” layout. In fact, for those that utilize them, it may hurt what’s most important to their bottom line — me, the reader. My page views and my time on their site.

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WP Late Night 002: The Usual Suspects

Prepare your earholes for the second-ever episode of WP Late Night, the WordPress podcast from Brad Williams, Dre Armeda, and Ryan Imel (that’s me!). This episode we discussed a number of recent events in the WordPress community, and even tried (kind of) to deduce the identities of the WP Honey Badger and PinkPonyPress.

You can read the episode breakdown and listen to the audio itself just after the jump.

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  • Plugins

Internationalization should be common practice, not a feature

A subject finally getting some attention in the WordPress community is i18n, or internationalization.

Internationalization is the process of making an application ready for translation. Often this gets confused with localization, which is the process by which the text on the page and other settings are translated and adapted to another language and culture.

Both internationalization and localization are equally important within WordPress, but there cannot be any localization if the theme or plugin has not been internationalized first. Therefore it is of utmost importance for WordPress theme and plugin developers to internationalize their software, regardless of whether it ever actually receives a translation into another language.

In the past couple of months we have seen more and more articles being published on the subject of internationalization. Some are even dripping with frustration!

  • Last October Thord Daniel Hedengren published Don’t Be A Dick: Localize Everything, then
  • in December David Decker posted The 7 Cardinal Sins of Localizing WordPress Plugins and Themes.

I must admit that I have left frustrated comments on sites like WPCandy, WPBeginner, WPMU and the like, whenever something is promoted that is not properly internationalized. It seems I finally got someone’s attention as Ryan is the one who asked me to write this editorial after I left yet another frustrated comment on one of the articles published here.

For those whose native language is not English and who want to develop websites in more than one language, it is very frustrating to read any news about Fantastic Hypothetical Theme A or Cool Plugin B that were just released, only to realize after downloading that it is actually completely useless since it hasn’t be internationalized!

And do you know what is even worse? When said theme or plugin costs money (often called premium). Not only is that frustrating, it’s just wrong. Despite the number of features your theme or plugin has, if it has not been internationalized it shouldn’t be sold in the first place.

This is just not open for discussion. Internationalization should be common practice, not a feature!

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The Quarterly Magazine’s design process, sped up on video

The first issue of The WPCandy Quarterly is in the printing queue as you read these words. Exciting, right? Since there’s nothing I can do to speed up the process (believe me, I would if I could) I’ve taken some time and looked back over the first issue’s development.

One thing I did, while the design process of the Quarterly moved along, was save several drafts. There were nearly 50 individual design drafts of this issue, actually (we drafted articles separately with the individual authors).

Since the drafts were interesting, I put together a quick video showing a few stages of development for various pages within the Quarterly. In the video you get to see the pages when they weren’t much more than words on a page, when they changed formats and styles, and then what they eventually become. I had fun making it, so I hope you enjoy watching it.

I’ve embedded the video below, just after the jump.

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How to query by “standard” post format

Ever find yourself wanting to query the “standard” post format within WordPress and not having much luck? It turns out there’s a Trac Ticket for this very subject. But for now, Alex King came up with a way for it to work with WP_Query calls. Go have a look at his code.

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The first WP on Tour was a huge success

The 15th of January through the 22nd finally saw its first WP on Tour go live. WPCandy mentioned WP on Tour here before, but it’s basically a bunch of WordPress developers (of all shapes and sizes) sharing a working space for a week.  This first edition saw 10 of us — yes, I was fortunate to be among them — in a beautiful house in Sitges, Spain having fun and co-working for 7 days.

You can find the full list of WP on Tour attendees on this Twitter list, You might have noticed some of your WordPress buddies on Twitter mentioning the #wpontour hashtag and you might have concluded that we had a lot of fun…

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The WPCandy Quarterly print proofs are in

The WPCandy Quarterly is, as far as I know, the first-ever WordPress-centric magazine. Or rather, it will be when it begins shipping out to subscribers in the next week or so. On Friday I received the final print proofs, which wraps up the last necessary step before all the issue are printed and delivered.

I’ve dropped in a few photos of the proof sheets below. Of course I’m a bit biased, but I think this issue looks fantastic. I’ll have more to share about the production process next week, but I just couldn’t help sharing this update now. I’m pretty excited to see this coming together.

Remember, we have a limited number of issues. Pick one up today to be sure you have one of the first issues of the Quarterly.

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Pressbits 005: Don’t delete plugin options on deactivation

In this episode of Pressbits I discuss my pet peeve of plugin developers deleting my options settings on deactivation, rather than upon uninstallation.

You should listen to it, especially if you’re a plugin developer.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you would rather download it directly you can do that too, or subscribe to this show via RSS or on iTunes. If you would prefer a written summary, you can also read that just after the jump.

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Pressbits 004: Don’t hesitate to release plugins

In this episode of Pressbits I discuss the hesitance I sometimes see in folks to release their code as WordPress plugins. Listen, I dare you:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you would rather download it directly you can do that too, or subscribe to this show via RSS or on iTunes. If you would prefer a transcript, you can also read that just after the jump.

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Envato removes price adjustment tool from their Elite program

This morning Collis Ta’eed announced on the Envato Notes blog that their price adjustment tool, previously available to Envato Elite authors on their marketplaces that reached $75,000 in sales, is no longer available. Normally prices on the Envato marketplaces are set by Envato during the product review process, and not by the author of the product. The price adjustment tool, announced last year, allowed certain authors to test out different prices for their products beyond what the marketplace would set for them.

The change, Ta’eed said, comes to prepare for the next major change to Envato’s pricing strategy. The introduction of variable pricing for certain elite authors was Envato’s first step toward dynamic pricing. “While it has had some success,” he said, “it’s become clear to us that it’s not the long-term solution.” The updated pricing solution — while what it is isn’t exactly clear yet — is slated for release “later this year”.

With the pricing tool removed, any marketplace products with modified prices will be left at the last price their author left them at. This affects 160 current authors who have already reached the $75,000 Elite level.

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