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

After some careful consideration, it was time to jettison the previous design, in favour of something far more simple, clear and uncluttered.

If the design looks familiar, it’s probably because I covet John Gruber’s daring fireball and have been strongly influenced by his aesthetically pleasing approach. Continue Reading »

There’s one thing that, possibly, peeves me off more than, well, anything else. That moment where you read a staggeringly assumptive article that simultaneously states the obvious, yet misses the point entirely.

I have a penchant for knowing - just, well, knowing - when a blog or website is powered by Wordpress. You know? Way too many links in the sidebar or header, usually styled the same way? Info all over the place? A candidly modified Kubrick theme? Referring to static pages as, omigod, Pages? #

On the subject of updates - just a quick note to indicated broadleaf has undergone a minor revision and is now both 2.0.x and 2.1.x compatible. Twice the leafy love, half the fat.

I’ve been using an admin bar plugin for some time now, which sadly hasn’t been particularly friendly under wordpress 2.1.

Thus, I present to you Admin Strip 2, the rejuvenated version of the wildly successful admin bar.

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 ‘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.

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’?

After a short hiatus — the orange powered ninja is back and is just as badass ((.. or is that just plain bad? :) )) as ever.

If you recall, I had been experiencing some issues with the wordpress function is_page() — in that it wouldn’t always return a valid value ((.. due in part to my craptastic coding skills and playing fast and loose with functions)) in the sidebar. After trying, once again to crack the is_page() puzzle, I was struck by a simpler, faster and stupefyingly simple alternative. You ready for it?