smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

For the love of cthulu, under no circumstances, whatever you do, do not click here.

On a side note, I’ve ended up with two projects on the go..

I’d like to present a small list of 9 rules that I have slowly begun to adopt, after sitting down one day and asking myself what do I need to do, to successfully plan, initiate and complete a project.

These rules have become a bit of a bible in some respects and after much brainstorming, including talking to some very successful folks, I came up with 9 rules. I wanted 10, but I prefer odd numbers and 7 rules seemed to be a cop-out. :)

This week I am reminded, again, why I’m beginning to find the wordpress community distasteful in it’s propensity to defend the honour of Wordpress, without taking the time to listen to the common punter and indeed get the details right.

Whilst Lorelle has thoughtfully provided a great upgrade guide, she does have these kind words for anyone who follows the actual upgrade advice for Wordpress 2.1:

In other words, if you didn’t follow the instructions right, why blame WordPress? Follow them and they work.

That’s a fair call, as is the following:

Support volunteers provide these instructions on the WordPress Codex, on the forum, and all over the place. Then these same volunteers spend hours and hours saying, “Did you follow the upgrade instructions?� “No. I uploaded the files over the old ones.�

Great response there Lorelle, but have you checked the instructions before making that claim?

In order to better track changes to the plugin code, I’ve started a google code project - check it out for more details

From the ashes of sig2feed, comes RSS Signature ((.. insert dramatic music, here.)), which should happily function in Wordpress 2.0.x and above (including the shiny new 2.1.0 release).

I would recommend the update, due in part to some code clean-up ((..not to mention the sexy new plugin name ;) )), combined with the options panel moving under ‘Manage’ in the Wordpress admin interface.

The annual
Talk Like a Pirate Day - September 19.

The ‘foo has just been upgraded to Wordpress 2.1, with nary an issue in sight ((.. yes, I was going to hold off, but all credit to the WP team - 2.1 upgrade was flawless)). Well done Matt and the team, the upgrade was surprisingly bump free and the new features ((.. such as auto-save)) are very well received.

Granted — Whilst I still cannot bring myself to use the WYSIWYG editor, the rest of the improvements look particularly solid.

An additional upside is that sig2feed appears ((provisionally, at least)) to be quite operational under 2.1, so it should be ready for you on the ‘other side’ of the upgrade — another win for the day!

In the words of Kosh Naranek “..and so it begins”:

“On behalf of the WordPress.org community of commiters, contributers, and volunteers, I’m very proud to announce the immediate availability of WordPress 2.1 ‘Ella’, named for jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald.” ~ via Development Blog

There are simply too many “new and improved” features to mention, however I would strongly advise that a quick check of plugin compatibility should be the first order of business, followed by a complete backup of everything^tm before any upgrade is attempted.

Whilst skimming through my daily reads, Kottke was one of a few to break the latest news regarding Wikipedia:

“All links on Wikipedia now automatically use the ‘nofollow’ attribute, which means that when Google crawls the site, none of the links it comes across get any PageRank from appearing on Wikipedia” ~ via kottke.org

Gee, Wikipedia, aren’t you a day late and a dollar short? Surely you haven’t bought into Google’s no-follow propaganda?

Of course they have. Yet another web entity that just doesn’t “get” the idea behind no-follow and somehow believes it will help stem the spam tide, despite the mounting evidence that no-follow does no such thing and never has. Indeed about the only folks who still consider it an anti-spam tool, are Google and now Wikipedia.

Came across this earlier today - could it be the open source alternative to OS X and Garageband?

Coming this April… Ubuntu Studio.

A multimedia creation derivative of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional. ~ Ubuntu Studio - Let your Creativity Fly

I’ve been pondering restarting podcasting, indeed Heilemann decided to volunteer me for a potential Habari podcast candidate, in a recent comment via IRC. However the biggest stumbling block has been finding a Microsoft Windows, or Linux based audio editing software or platform that makes the process less intensive and time consuming, without breaking the bank in the process.

On the topic of habari, I came across an interesting post today.

Seems like there are too many cooks, but no head chef running the project, so everything is a long discussion. I understand the project is getting organized and whatnot, and as new people come in, their visions need to be dealt with, but I fear the project will split into two if someone doesn’t come in and get people organized. ~ D3 Habari

An interesting comment - which on the surface makes immediate sense. After all, how can any project survive without a ‘fearless leader’?

There’s a new kid on the block, who is set to shake up the Blog and CMS world in 2007.

Habari, a Swahili word that translates to ‘news’, is both an experiment in MOSS (Massively Open Source Software) and a fresh new look at blogging - think CMS meets WoW. Now, you may be thinking “great, another CMS, just what the world needs - when does the Web 2.0 hurting stop?!”, which, to be honest was my initial thought. But not for long.

Rather than being a fork ((.. such as forking from wordpress, b2, etc)) of an existing blog or CMS software, Habari seeks to take advantage of modern PHP versions and the features they provide - from scratch. But that’s not it’s sole claim-to-fame.

Open platform, open community.

Habari is different - it seeks to be inclusive of those interested in either providing code, able to test, report and perhaps fix bugs, have a flair for design, or indeed pretty much any other assistance that can be provided. The key to this, is the ‘all voices heard’ approach, where many, many voices are encouraged to help improve the product.