In Case You Missed It – Issue 9

Chris Lema Launches Beyond Good

Chris Lema has launched a new site called Beyond Good that provides insight, tips, and methodologies for leading employees to become better than good. If it’s anything like his other sites, it’s sure to be a hit in the WordPress community.

Remote Jobs, a Remote Worker Specific Jobs Board

Chris Wallace and the team at Lift have launched Remote Jobs, a jobs board specifically catered to remote workers. According to Wallace, “The site exists to help others find remote jobs that connect them with their passions in life.” Check out the site as there’s already a decent listing of opportunities available for remote workers.

Why .Blog is Worth $19M

Matt Mullenweg participated in a phone interview with VentureBeat. The first question in the interview asks why the .blog domain is worth $19M.

Well, the domain business is actually a really good business because you can sell a domain and people use it and keep it forever. So, if you look at like a Verisign, or people who have TLDs, it’s actually an incredible business.

We really wanted .blog to be open, and some of the other applications for .blog were closed, including Google — so, let’s say for example, only Blogger could have a .blog domain. And we thought that .blog should be open to everyone, even if they’re not using WordPress.

I gotta be honest though, it was a stressful auction.

There are other tidbits of information included in the interview that I highly encourage you to read. If I were Google, I’d be upset as .blog is the perfect complimentary domain for Blogger.

Drupal Association Gives Community Member a Lifetime Ban

DrupalCon New Orleans took place last week and during the event, several speakers experienced online harassment in the form of derogatory racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments and images from an anonymous Twitter account. Upon further investigation by community members and the Drupal Association technical and event staff, the harassment was tracked to an attendee at the event.

This person was then confronted by members of the Drupal Association staff and the Community Working Group. They were asked to leave the event and informed that they have been banned from attending any future DrupalCons as well as any events produced by the Drupal Association, in accordance with the DrupalCon Code of Conduct, which states, ‘We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form.’ Shortly after the person left the conference, the account from which the harassing tweets were made was deleted.

This is an excellent example of why Codes of Conduct exist for events. By the way, check out the Code of Conduct that’s in place for every WordCamp. If you experience harassment of any kind at a WordCamp, please tell event staff.

Plans Published to Upgrade WordPress Support Forums

Jennifer Dodd published a detailed plan for migrating the WordPress.org support forums from bbPress 1.x to 2.x. The project is a huge undertaking and involves moving massive amounts of data. If all goes according to plan, the support forums will be on bbPress 2.x by the end of the year. I’m sure a lot of support forum volunteers are stoked to hear this news.

What NOT to Name a WordPress Theme

This tweet by Ryan Sullivan gave me a good laugh.

I'd strongly consider rebranding. pic.twitter.com/9MeevJTlPq

— Ryan Don Sullivan (@ryandonsullivan) May 19, 2016

Tom McFarlin on Improving the WordPress Plugin UX

Tom McFarlin published a great article that offers ideas on how plugin developers can improve the WordPress plugin user experience. His first suggestion is a key reason I think GravityForms became successful.

Try to make sure that your project tightly integrates with the core WordPress user interface.

When I witnessed GravityForms for the first time in 2009, I loved how it integrated into the WordPress backend as if it were a part of the core software. Fast forward to 2016 and plugins that tie into a service are experimenting with overlay interfaces that replace WordPress’. The most recent example I recall is WP Forms that I reviewed earlier this year.

In my review, I specifically noted that the interface the developers used allowed me to focus on creating forms. It doesn’t seem like it’s a WordPress core feature and it didn’t have too. While the advice McFarlin gives is likely accurate for most cases, there are plugins that benefit from having a unique user interface different from WordPress’.

Don’t Edit Core

This comic created by CommitStrip made me smile.

Coder Dilemma #9 – The Upgrade
https://t.co/2Tu2l1tgYX pic.twitter.com/xnMr2VdYWv

— CommitStrip (@CommitStrip) May 17, 2016

Wapuu Tattoo!

In what is a traditional part of this series, I end each issue by featuring a Wapuu design. For those who don’t know, Wapuu is the unofficial mascot of the WordPress project. WordCamp St. Louis 2016, took place last weekend and one of the attendees had a Wapuu tattoo! Wapuu looks good everywhere, including human skin!

Wapuu has been sighted at #wcstl #wordpress #wapuu pic.twitter.com/4HYlp6GI0S

— Nile Flores (@nilefloresmedia) May 14, 2016

That’s it for issue nine. If you recently discovered a cool resource or post related to WordPress, please share it with us in the comments.