Archive for February, 2008
There are some interesting posts appearing about comment policies, do follow, and the do follow list at Affilliate Watcher - Are Do-Follow Bloggers Dishonest?, and Reader Appreciation Project - Are We Do-Follow Frauds?, and I think it is beneficial to set out my opinion.
The key complaint is that there are sites that advertise themselves, either on the site, or on a do-follow list, as not marking up links in comments as no-follow, that are not doing what they say. They have advertised that they do not no-follow and yet they still do.
Now, obviously if you advertise that you do something and don’t do it then that is misleading and you should take steps to resolve it; and if what you have decided to advertise is that you will not add the no-follow attribute to links then you should be clear on what that means and whether you can deliver it.
Some sites, it seems, are disabling no-follow on the name, but keeping it for links within the text, and this isn’t really in the spirit of things really.
I think personally you should either do-follow or you not; however, my issue is really with the concept of a do-follow list in the first place.
The no-follow attribute doesn’t achieve what it was intended to achieve: to reduce spam. So in my eyes it is useless and I use it only because it is automatic, not because I agree with it. If, by removing it, I can offer some advantage to my readers then that is a good thing.
Take careful note however that I only care about it in relation to my readers.
What the do-follow list does is advertise that you give Google juice, however little you have, to people who comment on your blog. This creates the situation whereby someone can find your name from a list visit your blog and add a comment purely because they expect that link to benefit them.
It may be that I am being naive, and if so then that’s fine, but I feel quite strongly that a comment is there because you want to connect with the person, you want to say something, or you want to take part, and if there is search love as a result of that, well that is an added bonus. If the desire for benefit comes first then I have a hard time caring about what someone thinks they will get by commenting.
The obvious answer, of course, is not to be part of the list; I ain’t. I also consider myself lucky that my Google juice is so weak that no one would want to comment who couldn’t care less about what I actually wrote, purely because it gets them some advantage.
Two other things were also brought up are comment signatures, and typing something that isn’t a name into the name field.
Comment signatures don’t bother me as they are usually pretty innocuous but I have had problems with keywords in the name field.
The thing is, I like people to comment, and when someone doesn’t use their name it always feels a little like they are putting up a wall between us. I wonder whether they would rather use my blog for their own searchy gain, than receive a comment back and whether they will ever visit again.
When I do respond I wonder what I should say? Can I use their name? must I call them ‘Master Builder’ or is ‘Geoff’ OK? And if I do use ‘Geoff’ will the rest of the commenters in the conversation understand who I mean?
I do get comments from people that use their site name instead of their real name, people I have had ongoing comment conversations with, and who’s comments I look forward to and respect, and once I know them, besides occasionally having to check out their site to remember how to spell their name properly, it all goes well. So this isn’t really a problem in real life, just in the theoretical blog palace that is my brain.
I’m sure, therefore, that all this is largely a comment on my naivety, but I can’t help wondering if I am the only one that feels this way? Have I fallen for the ideal and missed the reality of life as a blogger?
I feel like I have been promising a theme for a long time now, long in internet time anyway. It is taking longer than I thought, partly due to work commitments, so I thought I owed anyone that might be waiting an explanation of what I’m doing, and info on when bits of it will be available, so that is the point of this post.
I have never been one to make life easy on myself and so instead of just throwing together a theme I decided to take the opportunity to stretch myself as a programmer. Time will tell if that was a mistake but I do quite like the concept I have come up with.
Cheesecake
I have seen the rise of premium themes, and the rise of themes with multiple layout and colour options and decided that there was no way I could provide everything that I think a premium (or in my case fremium) theme should have using the tools available.
What I came up with is Cheesecake.
The concept of Cheesecake is based on the dessert; it is a multi layered product with each layer achieving a different aim:
The Biscuit - This is the base, it gives the content a platform to rest on and defines the shape of the desert.
The Cheese - This is the real substance of the dessert; it provides the bulk of each dessert and gives it flavour.
The Fruit - This is the accent, the zing, and the colour. This is the cherry on the cake.
And the best part, the pattissier who combines it all together in any way you please.
If this is all sounding a tad conceptual for your tastes I don’t blame you, so here is the what it actually does.
Cheesecake is a theme within a theme. It re-creates the WordPress theme system in a way that allows each of the layers I have mentioned to be selected individually, so:
The biscuit is the layout. 1 column?, 2, 3, 4? left, right, centred, content? anything is possible provided someone has created an optional biscuit layer for you to select from.
The cheese is the layout of the content. Imagine you want a layout that contains three posts in columns with one post full width beneath it, or a single post with an image pulled from a custom field. Simply select them from the list, whether each should apply to every page, or only the home page, or only a category, or only a specific category. Anything that anyone can build and create as a cheese layer can be selected without modifying anything.
Finally the fruit. The fruit provides the colours, the graphics, and possibly some aspects of the layout. This means you can select the look separately from the layout and content layout.
So what’s the problem. Well there are a few. It works. Not everything necessary is there, but the big bits work. Unfortunately each option needs creating and I haven’t done any serious CSS or design work for a while so I am struggling a bit just to test it properly. It is a big project for me and time is proving a problem.
For the technically minded of you I have used Google Code to do it so you can get everything I have done so far from the SVN. Note however that this is a PHP 5 only project.
The Cheesecake WordPress Theme hosted at Google.
So what next?
It is essential that I brush up on my CSS skills as I need a default theme for this to run just so I can start testing it properly. With that in mind, from Monday next week I will be starting a series of posts where I will create a non-cheesecake theme from scratch. This will help to focus my mind back on how to even do this, and more importantly provide some really useful information on basic theme creation for you guys in the process.
A few days ago it was announced that PAS (publicly available specification) 78, an accessibility specification developed with the British Standards Institution (BSi), would be developed into a fully fledged British Standard.
This is potentially quite important given the problems, delays, with WCAG 2.0.
On Friday’s WordPress Weekly podcast we had a bit of a discussion about WordPress and PHP5. As this is a contentious subject I am not sure how well I explained myself on the podcast I have decided to expand on my thoughts here.
This is a subject that has sparked heated debate in the past and was resurected in the podcast as a result of Matt being asked about it in an interview at Yahoo. I have no desire to get it going in full blown style again, but this isn’t going to go away and eventually WordPress must change.
Straight up, I want WordPress to be PHP 5 minimum, because that is what I use, and what I know, but I want to be reasonable; I want to consider the needs of people who don’t care what version is used as long as it works, or those who are restricted because of their host. That causes me some problems and I am really caught between two opinions with no deciding factor between the two.
It really is hard to get across in text just quite how conflicted I am over these two points.
In the interview Matt stated that there are no killer features in PHP 5 that make upgrading really exciting and I largely agreed with that on the podcast, but I want to make a distinction here.
There are some great features in PHP 5, features that I think could bring a lot to WordPress. Features that increase security, make it easier to work with objects, make it easier to create ajax features and work with XML; however, if the figures on PHP 5 adoption are correct it seems hard to justfy these benefits when compared with the possibility that over 50% of users will find that they cannot upgrade, and those that do may well find their blogs inoperable with no idea why.
In that context I don’t see anything PHP 5 brings as do-or-die features.
If it were really up to me, I would just bite the bullet and do it. I would label the next version of WordPress after 2.5 with a minimum requirement of PHP 5 and make a big fuss about it to be sure no one missed it. I would tell users to ditch any hosts that have not upgraded.
WordPress 2.5 would have been ideal for this because there a lot of other big changes, why not get the big stuff out of the way? But it isn’t up to me.
Given that it isn’t up to me the next best solution is PHP 6 compatibility. I mentioned this in the podcast because I think it is important.
PHP 5 is for the most part PHP 4 compatible, but some of these compatibilities will not be there in PHP 6. The big one for me is that PHP 6 won’t support PHP 4 style object constructors, but I’m sure there will be other things.
Update: I can’t tell you where this information came from because I haven’t been able to work it out. Wherever I got it from it seems it just isn’t true. I was wrong. Nothing suggests that this will be the case and so we shall just have to wait and see what is or is not compatible when PHP 6 is released.
There is so much potential within PHP 5 that I think it would be a shame for WordPress to fall behind as a result of trying to maintain support. Competition is growing all the time, as is the temptation to jump ship.
I think there is a decision to make about whether WordPress should try and serve as many people as possible, or keep up with the technology to be the best it possibly can be. These may not be compatible and I am glad it isn’t my choice to make.