If you use the Thesis theme framework, then you should have noticed no negative side effects after upgrading to WordPress 2.9 (or 2.9.1).
The only issue that I have found is that WordPress now has basic canonical URL handling. Why is that an issue?
Thesis has had more complete canonical address handling for quite some time now, pretty since canonical addresses were just starting to be hip & cool.
And while Thesis has an option on its options page to disable its canonicalization, we shouldn’t sacrifice the more robust option. Instead, add this piece of code to your custom/custom_functions.php file, which will disable WordPress’ canonical URLs.
# Remove WordPress' canonical links in preference of Thesis'.
remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');
I‘ve had an idea in mind for a WordPress plugin for quite some time, and I’ve tried a few times to code it myself — or modify existing plugins to get some of the functionality that I want. Today, the idea came back to me in an expanded form.
I believe that the plugin would be a huge benefit to anyone running a Bible study, theology, or church site, and I’m hoping that someone out there reading either has the skills or knows someone who has the skills to accomplish this for the benefit of the community. I’m willing to help in whatever way I can, but remember that I’m posting this because, well, I’ve tried and failed.
The plugin is a combination of two ideas, and I suppose they could be developed separately. [continue reading…]
I finally upgraded KingdomGeek to Thesis 1.6 — I’m rather late to the game, which might surprise some of you.
Truth is, I’m no longer much involved with Thesis at all, for a variety of reasons which I don’t really care to go into at this point. However, I still have the OpenHook plugin, which I’m not about to abandon. I have some ideas to improve OpenHook, but if I’m going to push forward with it, I need to do so using the latest Thesis codebase. (Incidentally, the latest codebase totally nerfed the custom styling I was using… so we’re back to default for the time being. I really dislike that I now have to override colors. I dove into Thesis because it was minimalistic and easy to style; now I have to do half my work in a custom style sheet and half of it in the layout panel… Simplify, simplify, simplify.)
I upgraded KingdomGeek because, against all common sense, I prefer to do my development here. I do this for two reasons: KingdomGeek isn’t my primary source of income, so downtime doesn’t kill me. Also, you users are far more likely to catch certain gaffes that I may take months to find, if I ever do. In other words, many eyes are better than two. Oh, and yes, I realize my nav menu looks terrible. You can still click it, though; go ahead, don’t be afraid… You’re making it self-conscious now.
The next version of OpenHook, I hope, will greatly improve user experience and efficiency. I plan to rewrite things from the ground up to make the code simpler and sexier — in the spirit of Thesis itself. What this means is that I will be potentially nuking all of your current OpenHook customizations (that’s one of many possible bugs I’m envisioning in this scenario…). In other words, when you see an update notification, don’t dive headlong into it. Check feedback on Twitter first — it’ll either be praise or cursing for @KingdomGeek; take that and decide whether to upgrade or not when the time comes. (Yes, I do test my code, but like I said, bugs slip by me. I’ve not attuned my perfectionism enough to be a great coder.)
So what will OpenHook have in the future? (And this is future… Don’t expect an update anytime too soon.) Well, there are a number of things I have in mind (maybe I’ll finally ajaxify things a bit?), but the big win that I have on the top of my list is sandboxing. On more than one occasion I’ve heard of users making some modifications only to discover their blog is screwed up. Fatal errors are the pits, and I’m hoping to set up OpenHook to protect against fatal errors. (Lesser errors are still wholly your responsibility.
Now’s the time to drop feature requests, though. I’m a bit out of touch with the Thesis community — I don’t have the time for it like I used to, primarily — so let me know for what you all have been longing, ‘kay?
It isn’t often enough that a video game completely catches my attention, sapping away days at a time while I venture through the game’s world, questing toward the climax. The number of such games likely barely scrapes a dozen, but I am pleased to be able to add yet another to that total:
Borderlands. I hadn’t heard much about the game prior to playing it. Indeed, my purchase of the game was more an impulse decision than anything. My brother was visiting for ten days, and halfway through the visit, I made a run to Walmart for some Coke. While there, I detoured through the game section — as is my way — and checked out a few new releases. Borderlands was one that I picked up, and while I didn’t look over the whole case, I caught two details which sealed the sale for me: it supported two-player local cooperative, and it was a role playing shooter.
I brought the game home, and we began to play it straightaway.
To say that we were both blown away would be an understatement. [continue reading…]
(Yes, I do test my code, but like I said, bugs slip by me. I’ve not attuned my perfectionism enough to be a great coder.)
