The comment that got me thinking was:

I’m usually of the opinion that all advancements are good, even if they’re really bad. What I mean by this is that the software is continually evolving and we’re trying and experimenting with different concepts to push the system.

Justin Tadlock

I’ve never really though of the changes that WordPress goes through as evolution; however, now I think about it, evolution is a perfectly valid description.

What is evolution?

The process of evolution is fairly simple. As each new generation of a species comes about the traits of that species will vary between individuals. Where the variations of some individuals are better placed to react to the environment, those individuals will tend to prosper, while others who are less well suited will be less likely to prosper.

Over time the beneficial variations of those traits will be retained while the unhelpful versions will become uncommon or even be removed completely.

In this way the organism will change to suit the environment, or it will die out because it fails to do so.

How does that apply to WordPress?

Software in general works in this way, but perhaps WordPress more so.

When version 2.7 is released several things will happen. Users will install it and test out the features, developers will take it and begin to create and innovate with it. But the one thing that is virtually certain is that no two sites will be the same.

Each installation will use a different theme, different plugins, and different widgets. In the transition some of these things will be cast aside. Threaded comment plugins may or may not die, themes may be discarded if they don’t support the new features, etc. Others will be picked up and may become the next big thing.

The popularity of each theme, plugin, or widget will have a direct influence on the future development of WordPress itself, with the successful traits being brought into the core, and the unsuccessful being left to die.

That’s not quite the end of the matter though. WordPress has selection pressures beyond simple popularity. WordPress, in the shape of WordPress.com is also a commercial product for Automattic. Features they want or need for commercial reasons are likely to get greater development time and will compete with those features that would normally succeed through popularity alone.

You also need to consider which groups of users are likely to be most vocal, and more importantly, most persuasive. Are the non-technical users most persuasive because they tend not to have a voice, or are the technical minded users that get stuck in most likely to win out because they present solutions, instead of problems?

All these areas are pressures on the features that are ultimately selected.

Reversion

One very important factor of biological evolution that is often misunderstood is that progress isn’t always forwards. Evolution is simply adaptation to the environment, changing to cope with different pressures. That might mean that traits are more beneficial if they revert to previous versions or even reduce the functionality of certain components, both of which have been known to occur in fish.

The point is that WordPress can evolve into better software by reducing the complexity, or even removing entirely, components that are holding it back. There are people calling for this and so you should consider whether their suggestions will improve the product.

You should also remember that evolution is never a permanent change. Evolution will favour components that are in everyday use by more people than not, if you remove a component, or move it to a plugin, it will become part of the core again if it is needed. Consider what happened to draggable boxes between 2.5 and 2.7.

Sum

There are two important points to think about here:

Firstly, the people out there who don’t like the changes should not be dismissed. They may be right in the long term, but overridden by stronger selection pressures in the short term.

Considering their point of view may be the very thing that WordPress needs if it is to successfully adapt in the future.

Secondly, when things happen that you don’t like you need to seriously consider whether WordPress is adapting to the wrong pressures, making it less likely to survive, or whether it is evolving perfectly for its environment but that it is you that is outside WordPress’s chosen environment. If it is the latter then perhaps WordPress isn’t for you any more.

My argument is that a post, by definition, is something that is meant to be transient. It is based on time and so is always intended to fade away as new content replaces it. By making a post ’sticky’ you are changing it into something else, something that is not a post.

Pages on the other hand are exactly what sticky posts are aiming to achieve. They are static pieces of content without time constraints. They are logically, procedurally and philosophically the very thing that sticky posts aims to provide.

The argument that was put to me was that while this may be true the practicalities outweigh the philosophical differences. That ticking a box and making a post sticky requires no modifications to the theme and so is the best method for the most people, but I think that once you start bending aspects of WordPress within the core simply because this method is the one that has become popular, you are saying that these definitions don’t matter.

OK, so what do you need to do to uses page this way instead? Well it is simple really.

Create a new page in WordPress and give it a slug of sticky. Next add the following to your functions.php file:

function sticky_page(){
	if ( is_home() ){
		$page = get_page_by_path( '/sticky/' );
		echo $page->post_content;
	}
}

Finally, insert this into your index.php file where you want the content:

<?php sticky_page(); ?>

That doesn’t seem so difficult, right?

I would like to get your opinion on this. Am I being a bit of a philosophy Nazi by taking the view that sticky posts are table-based layouts for 2008? or should there be a clear distinction between blog post, and non-blog post content?

That problem is now gone thanks to Peter who has written a plugin that uses the WordPress shorcodes API to insert the blog URL so now your links will change automatically.

Its a great idea and might well save your hours of trouble at some point in the future.

In the past few days I have installed Chyrp, Symphony, Habari, and WordPress. All of them except WordPress have an installation process that consists of simply navigating to the site. There is no need to rename the config file, it asks you the questions it needs to know. Drupal and Joomla also do this.

Check out these examples:

Nothing I’m saying here is new, these installers have been around for a long time, so isn’t it about time that installation didn’t require editing a config file?

Update: Thanks to Omar I now know that there is an installer for this and it isn’t necessary to create the config file at all. And I’ve been following the bloody instructions all these years!! Cripes!

What is the third way?

When a visitor comes to your blog at WordPress.com they access pages stored on WordPress’s servers. These contact the database, also on WordPress’s servers and serve that data up in the form of the finished page.

When a visitor comes to your self-hosted WordPress.org blog they access pages stored on your servers. These contact the database, also on your servers, and serve that data up in the form of the finished page.

When a visitor comes to a third way site they access pages stored on your server. Your server contacts the third way API to collect data, carry out formatting functions, etc. The API retrieves the data from the third way database servers, does whatever it needs to and returns it to your servers where it is output in the form of pages.

What third way does is separate out the data and logic which is a hosted solution, from the administration and presentation which is self-hosted.

What’s the point?

The first and most obvious benefit is that by separating out the core logic you can now write your client in any language you choose. Want a C# version of WordPress? No problem, you are really just connecting to web services anyway.

A much smaller server client with much less logic means much less upgrading. But because it is a client and not a truly hosted solution it is up to you which plugins you install, which themes you install, or even if you want to do something very different with the data.

It also leaves the way open to do vastly different things with the design of the client if you don’t like the official version and, possibly even more importantly, allows another platform to use the API to switch solutions.

Sum

I don’t know if something like this will ever happen but I can see the possibilities. How about you? If Automattic (or anyone else for that matter) offered a third way version of WordPress would you be interested?

IntenseDebate is a plugin replacement for a blog’s commenting system. It handles the comments, threading, reputation points of commenters and a lot more. It also now has much better WordPress integration (similar to Disqus) so your comments will stay your own.

I think the timing of this is really interesting because IntenseDebate offers a really quite and simple way out for people upgrading to WordPress 2.7 and finding that their theme doesn’t support the new comment features, or that they are having difficulty converting to them.

I wrote a post a few weeks back: Why you should try Disqus before 2.7, and I think the same applies to IntenseDebate. It may well be the best way to upgrade the comments functions even though 2.7 has the natively.

Update: I have been told on twitter that there is a problem with the importer only importing one comment per post, per commenter. Whether that is setup specific or not I can’t say. The lesson here is to make sure you back up to make sure you can undo anything later.

These other advertising methods presented me with two main problems:

Firstly, I could not control what was offered. This site is just a hobby for me, but nonetheless I do still want it to be useful and so I want advertising that everyone that reads the site might genuinely find interesting.

Secondly, I didn’t really feel that there was any value either way. I want the advertiser to feel they are getting enough time to explain themselves and Google ads just don’t do that.

The Offer

I imagine most people assumed the nice big space at the top would be for advertising, and so it is.

My intention is to offer the space (700px X 150px ) for an entire calendar month ( December 1st to December 31st) to the person that has met the conditions below, and offered me the highest rate by Midnight (UK Time) on the 20th November. This isn’t an auction, there will be no re-bids, just tell me what you think is fair, and if it proves to be the best offer then I will accept it (subject to a minimum of £10).

Conditions

The conditions are fairly straightforward:

First and foremost the product or service must offer a benefit to WordPress users or developers. It doesn’t have to be targeted at WordPress specifically, but something unconnected like gambling, or coffee isn’t going to do.

Secondly, note that the space must be taken up by a JPG or PNG image. I don’t want anything animated or intrusive in any way. I will however accept up to five alternative images to be shown randomly if you so wish.

Third, the images must conform to my opinion about what is decent and appropriate.

Fourth, nothing will go on the page until I have received the payment, via paypal, in full. If I don’t have payment by the 25th November then the next person in the list will be contacted to ensure they have enough time to put together any graphics they want.

Fifth, besides the adverts that appear on the Google Search option your advert will be the sole advertising on this website during that period. This will have no affect on the content of the blog.

Lastly, the decision I make is final. The payment is for the given space for the given time period. There are no other promises or guarantees.

How to take me up on this

If you want to take me up on this then you need to email me at andrew.rickmann@gmail.com

Your e-mail needs to contain details of the link that you want the advert to point to, a brief description of the product or service and if it is not obvious details of why you think it would be beneficial for WordPress users or developers, and the amount, in UK Pounds, that you are proposing to pay for the space.

If you have any questions about this then please ask them in the comments rather than by e-mail so the answers are available for everyone else.

This is the first time I have done this so I don’t know how much interest I will get, or what prices I will get. That also means that it if you have something to promote it is probably worth your while taking a guess on a price. You could be the only person who puts in an offer.

What is a mode?

A mode is actually very simple. As a visitor moves through your site they will do so in a few different ways. They may link from post page to post page, sort by tag, sort by category or run a search. Depending on whether they are browsing, seeking, or searching their needs will differ.

A mode is a change in the way your theme works to try and meet those needs. So your theme may be in search mode, category mode, tag mode, or browse mode, at any one point in time.

What can I do with modes?

In the introduction I mentioned the template tag next_post_link can work in different ways. In category mode you would expect the user to work backwards through the posts in the category they have selected. The same applies for tag mode.

In search mode they may want access to their search results so they can view each one in turn without having to click back, or open new tabs.

In browse mode it may simply be enough to record the posts they have visited so that when they move modes they aren’t presented with the same posts that they have already seen. For example, If they browse through 5 posts before hitting a category page then presenting visited posts in a separate list from the non-visited posts might let find so much more.

What you do and how you do it is up to you, but there is ample room for you to be imaginative, and to surprise your visitors with the excellent new functionality that is available.

How do I implement modes?

How simple or complex you want your mode switch to be is up to you. At its most simplest all you need do is check the page the users is on and, if that page meets certain conditions, switch mode accordingly.

A very basic mode mode function might look a little like this:

function get_mode(){
	global $post;
 
	$current_mode = array();
	$current_mode[0] = ( isset($_SESSION['my_theme_mode']) ) ? $_SESSION['my_theme_mode'] : 'browse';
 
	switch( $current_mode[0] ){
		case 'category':
		$current_mode[1] = $_SESSION['my_theme_mode_category'];
		break;
		case 'tag':
		$current_mode[1] = $_SESSION['my_theme_mode_tag'];
		break;
		case 'search':
		$current_mode[1] = $_SESSION['my_theme_mode_search'];
		break;
		case 'browse':
		$current_mode[1] = $_SESSION['my_theme_mode_browse'];
		break;
	}
 
	//if is category, do it
	if ( is_category()){
		$_SESSION['my_theme_mode'] = 'category';
		$_SESSION['my_theme_mode_category'] = single_cat_title("", false);
		$current_mode[0] = 'category';
		$current_mode[1] = single_cat_title("", false);
	} elseif ( is_tag()){
		$_SESSION['my_theme_mode'] = 'tag';
		$_SESSION['my_theme_mode_tag'] = single_tag_title("", false);
		$current_mode[0] = 'tag';
		$current_mode[1] = single_tag_title("", false);
	} elseif ( is_search()){
		$_SESSION['my_theme_mode'] = 'search';
		$_SESSION['my_theme_mode_search'] = get_search_query();
		$current_mode[0] = 'search';
		$current_mode[1] = get_search_query();
	} elseif ( is_home() ) {
		$_SESSION['my_theme_mode'] = 'browse';
		$current_mode[0] = 'browse';
	}
 
	if ( is_single() ) {
		$browse_array = $_SESSION['my_theme_browsed_posts'];
		$browse_array[] = $post->ID;
		$_SESSION['my_theme_browsed_posts'][] = $browse_array;
	}
 
	$current_mode[2] = ( isset($_SESSION['my_theme_browsed_posts']) ) ? $_SESSION['my_theme_browsed_posts'] : array() ;
 
	return $current_mode;
 
}

A few posts ago I argued that posts shouldn’t be made more flexible, but more intelligent. Modes is one way to kick this off. What kid of changes would you want to see from an intelligent theme?

Fun with categories adds a method to search for posts that have both of two specified categories; for example, a post containing photographs of your cat might be assigned to categories, ‘Photos’ and ‘Cats’. To view all photographs in both of these categories you can use the URL: http://yourblog/categories/photos/cats/

Updates

The update is very minor. I have changed the way the SQL is generated so that it uses the built in $wpdb->posts function instead of containing the string, ‘wp_posts’. This makes sure it can support blogs where the database prefix has been changed.

In my view there are two types of widget. A widget that gets data from WordPress, and a widget that gets data from outside WordPress. In the first case some PHP will clearly be required, but the second? I think not.

There are a limited number of things that you might want to do to WordPress information when you display it in a widget. You may want to filter the data, combine two sets of data, limit the data, or add to the data, and you will usually want to do it to multiple records. Lastly you will want to create an HTML template, and a CSS template to use when outputing it.

It seems to me that these kinds of manipulations could be done with some kind of pseudo code, or even a simple UI so that all users can join in creating widgets, not just those that know how to write a plugin and use the WordPress API.

If you don’t know how to code PHP and if this kind of system was available is there any kind of widget that you would want, that you don’t have right now?