Wordpress Ready

Is that possible?

I was testing many twitter plugins for wordpress. Every one has some in common: they didn’t work with weblog clients. There is some kind of technical problem-concept in WordPress. The only one plugin that I found working is the brilliant Alex King’s Twitter Tools. It will send a twitt when you do a new post, I don’t know if can be tweaked with actions send a Twitter msg when you edit a post.

So what’s the buzz around XMLRPC? What is all about it? If you read in previous post One Ring to Rule Them All – Part I and Part II the idea is to get some tools to help you control your blogs in a remote-fashion. Expand your vision and imagine you have many blogs to control(maybe is already your scenario). What kind of tools will you use in such situation? I’m open to suggestions so let me know what you think.

I have been working around this XMLRPC limitation and I finally I got a simpler (maybe not that simple) workaround. This research lead me to a new plugin that I built: Another Twitter Updater.

Xmlrpc-enabled means that you can work with any weblog client and you won’t have any problems, so that’s is the main reason I’m releasing Another Twitter Updater plugin. Go to the Download page page to test it.

The most annoying thing in Scribefire was its inabiltiy to make custom fields in WordPress.

To keep things short, that bugged to me sometime until I decided to build a little plugin to workaround this problem.

Actually I’m thinking that I could do the same using shortcodes but for the moment you can test and enjoy the Scribefire Custom Field Plugin. Access to the Download Page and tell me what you think.

A short story.

Mike is beginning with your blog. One site, one browser, one wordpress editor. He is happy with it, but he has so many areas to cover that it decides he want to work with another blog. Two sites,  two editors.

Life is good.
Mike starts blogging both. Their sites are growing and he’s becoming a blog writer. Log in one blog, write, log in another blog, write… is that just easy. He doesn’t even need to remember log details for each site, the browser does it for him. One small problem though: some times it is painfully slow to edit with WP editor. If he works from Iphone it could be worst.  So many ideas to write, so little time… He wants to write post under 5 minutes, like a Twitter-blogger.

Time goes by and one day he begin another blog. He is working for a client. Three sites, three places to login and write.
Three windows, one for every blog. Things are going good, with some complication but he can handle.

Life is good… but it could be better.

Sometimes he is posting in the wrong places, but it’s alright, it is easy to fix and repost in the proper place. Every time he uses another computer he has to setup from scratch.
Sometimes he wishes to optimize its times, and he wanted to know how to do it.
…
(a year passes).
…
Mike is now blogging actively in few sites, for free, for itself and from other customers. It is getting complicated to follow each one. many users, paswords, and it is beggining to be crazy when he has to upload content on every one. Some time ago he decided to use a personal laptop. He refuses to use another computer, the setup is simply time consuming. Life is something between earth and hell.
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Ok, let’s multiply this scenario in some degree. What about if you are a professional blog writer maintaining a couple of sites, what about 10 or 20 blogs? Ok, I’m exaggerating a little bit (or isn’t?), we don’t have to go that far to understand what I’m pursuing here, but what if you are posting in many blogs? Is there any tools to aliviate your tasks?

They are indeed. The weblog client are here from sometime. They have some in common:

• Write post withoout having to be online
• Save drafting
• Faster interface
• Better formatting (well, it should be)
• Cross-post multiple blogs
• Local backups

Scribefire has all of this and a few others:

• Lightweight since it is a Firefox plugin
• easily upgradeable
• continous support
• Portable. If you are a traveller and use different computers, chances are that you use Firefox Portable. No many  blogging clients are portable (is there any?). Scribefire will go with you and with every Firefox Portable version you have on your pendrive.

I tested many blogger clients. I think BlogDesk is nice one, it has a minor drawbacks (non portable , some details related about how to handle draft/post items). Maybe one of the annoying problems (to me) is the inability to handle custom fields, something that we can discuss later in other post.(Yes, there is a solution)

To the point: the main factor for a weblog client is its ability to remote-blogging. You don’t have to log in your blog to post. With a proper configuration, it is much faster to blog from a weblog client than from wordpress editor itself.

Tell me what you think. Grab your timer and do the math.

WordPress has its roots in the blog, but its continued growth has become a system for creating sites extremely versatile. Also, its complexity increases  from version to version (see the graph of ‘hooks’ in The Proliferation of Hooks Over Time).

Hooks complexity over time

At the same time, the design complexity increases as more functionality is available. The use of frameworks for development Theme greatly accelerates the development of a theme.

Why should you use Theme frameworks?

1. It accelerates the development of a theme: The zero point for developing a theme is to create the theme manually. This is always possible, but we have to consider many factors to get a theme working: XHTML support, widget support, design, style management, etc.. The list of things to take into account is large (and it will grow in the future). Starting with a   thematic framework based theme guarantees enough room for expansion.

2. Child themes: This key concept has spread like wildfire across the Internet and has been the key development for themes framework. Child themes let you develop reusing framework functionality coding separation in an elegant fashion inheriting all their functionality. A smart way to develop and maintain our work separately so it will work without changing the framework’s code.

3. XHTML & Optimization SEO support: If you ever did a theme from scratch, you’ll know what I mean. Thematic frameworks provides a safe way to build xhtml valid themes, also SEO enabled and optimized.

4. Configurable Layout: Every framework provides some degree of flexibility to transform into a particular layout, fulfilling the developers needs to create themes with 2, 3 or more columns, a larger header, a footer particular, and so on.

5. Widget support: Another minor detail that a designer starts from scratch has to consider.

6. Extensibility through actions and hooks: Actions and hooks were a feature introduced in the WP core some time ago. This brilliant idea has been one of the factors which led to the growth of WP to the present, a factor used intensively in every thematic framework.

7. Support and expanding user community: all frameworks provide a level of support to settle the issues of extending it. Such as forums, forums and mor forums, the support is critical to effectively use the framework’s powers.

8. Upgradeable without trauma: The thematic frameworks have (or should have ) the ability to upgrade without affecting our custom code. With Our code separated from the framework, it is possible to reuse it even after the framework is updated.

9. Continuous Improvement: thematic frameworks continue to evolve  while WordPress improves. You won’t have to recode the whole theme because there is a new feature in the neighborhood.
10. It is inexpensive (if not free): The cost of a thematic framework ranging from completely free (Thematic) to a very reasonable price as Hybrid or  Thesis

The thematic frameworks are here to stay.  If you were downloading and and installing Free themes and then tweaking to meet your needs, you will have to reconsider the possibilities offered for a theme framework.