A couple of my favorite new Editor features are; concurrent document editing *(what wordpress calls - concurrent editing protection) which, in a nutshell locks the document and notifies an editor that someone else has that particular post/page open and is editing or revising it. Similar to “items checked out” in joomla, this is a feature I’d love to eventually incorporate into mojoBlog.

Another much needed improvement is the overhaul of the file/assests upload framework. Tedious at best, earlier versions offered a minimalist way to get illustrations/photos uploaded to your blog, one at a time. The new support for multiple uploads, optional EXIF includes (for photos) and the ability to upload mp3 and video files easily should render the half-dozen or so duplicit plugins needed to achieve the same tasks, obsolete.

From a wordpress developers perspective there’s a slew of new tools and APIs to wrap your head around: Shortcode API is a new framework which will allow developers and theme designers the ability to add short, bracket delineated function calls (much in the same way as we add calls to joomla plugins which, when rendered, will parse the function reference and load the entire function for use with the theme.

Salted Passwords and the inclusion of the phppass library are now utilized to increase user security and make the current barrage of tweenies trying to “brute-force” your wp-admin login impractical and ineffective.

All in all, the 2.5 release is a huge shift from earlier versions of WordPress and one (in my mind) that signals a solid commitment towards a more user/developer enhanced core framework, improved content and assets management and a forward thinking approach to website security and stability.

Over the next month we’ll/I’ll be moving the existing a8ejoomla website and forums to a spot on our site5 hosting server.

We will continue to support the a8ejoomla.com namespace until existing urls and trackbacks resolve to our newer, more phonetically streamlined moniker a8e.org.

I’m quite excited about the transition and the future of a8e. As a principal tool in my daily work cycle I’ve come to rely and trust the capabilities of the “legacy” joomla framework, a8ejoomla specifically. Granted, there’s a few issues and more than a few workarounds required to make joomla play nice as a stable, secure platform for clients production websites but, in it’s defense, there’s little else out there that offers as much flexibility and third party application support in an open source content management solution.

As a sort of an ongoing “addendum” to one of my favorite articles on common web design mistakes I’ve compiled a few notes on things we joomla! developers should do, but commonly don’t…

code for keeps

DON’T style html Tables. While there are certainly valid instances where tabular data needs to be structured in html tables, there’s little (if any) need to hard code inline html declarations such as table widths, borders, cell padding or alignment within our joomla component or module code. INSTEAD use extensible html css hooks.

Use semantic table html declarations as well as w3c and 508 compliant code to allow users to “style” our components or modules to suite their needs.

• Use a unique id name to set global attributes for your component tables instead of hard coded html styles.
• Use unique classes to change or modify your table attributes on a table by table instance.
• Add a table summary for screen readers (and improved 508 compliance).

Example:
<table cellpadding="2" width="100%" border="1" bgcolor="red">
<tr>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>

could be coded the same way with html and css to produce a semantic, user tweakable table element.

<table summary="dog food comparisons" class="report" id="myTable">
<tr>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>

with an accompanying css stylesheet like;

table#myTable {border:0; margin:0 auto; width:100%;}
table#myTable td {display: table-cell; padding: 2px;}
table#myTable.report {background-color:#fafafa;}


would display your table output defined by your css stylesheet instead of buried, hard coded in your component code.

SUMMARY:

1. You only have to code the basic table id structure once, reusing the code for each instance of a table in your code and,
2. By adding a unique class, you can override, modify or change the look and layout of different tables throughout your code.
3. You give your users the ability to tweak, change -just the css- to reflect their website design, without getting their hands dirty digging around in your code.

Successful blogs by their very nature tend to grow and evolve exponentially over time. Adding new categories and topics to your blog structure doesn’t pose much of an issue but, what do you do when you need to change the structure and categorical markup but don’t want folks/search engines getting whacked with “PAGE NOT FOUND” errors?

Give`em options

By default, many contemporary WordPress themes come with a rather boilerplate 404 page. The basic “Sorry but…” 404 wordpress page doesn’t really help folks coming in from a search portal looking for something specific.

With a small bit of code snipped from the wordpress codex, a great plugin from the raproject and a copy of your default 404.php you can help viewers find what they were looking for (and then some).

Get yer goodies

Step 1.- Get the code

Head over to wordpress codex , and copy the example code found under “Sending proper headers” then, scroll down to just below “Tips for Error pages” and highlight/copy the complete code example. Now, paste both these in your favorite text-editor.

Step 2.- Get the plugin

Visit raproject.com (readers appreciation project) and download the plugin WP Categories and Posts v1.0.
Uncompress the zip and FTP it to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.

Bop over to your WP site, go to your plugins and “activate” the plugin.

Step 3.- Edit the template

While in your WP admin, go to Presentation, click on Theme Editor and under the “Theme Files” column select/click 404 template.

If your theme didn’t come with a 404.php, you can try making a copy of your basic theme (index.php) renaming it 404.php and modifying it to exclude anything dealing with sections and comments..

Step 4.-Add code snippets

An issue with wordpress is, by default.. even IF a page or post isn’t found, it still returns a code 200 after a page is requested (meaning the page requested is fine) which, obviously it’s not.

That’s not playing nice with the search engines and spiders so, we’ll want to be truthful and own up to the broken link.

That’s where the first snippet of code comes in and is pasted on the very first line of your new 404.php template, before the get_header().
The next snippet basically sniffs out and displays the bad URL (the webpage folks THOUGHT they were coming to read) and helps folk recover from an improperly typed in address (I’ve done it…) and proves they’re not totally lost in the ether.

You can place the second snippet pretty much anywhere you want on the 404.php page, modify the default “sorry…” to reflect your sensibilities.

Step 5.-Add categories and Post links

The final bit of code I’ll go over is how to add the function that calls and displays all your blog categories and posts so lost 404 souls can easily find either the lost/renamed article they came looking for or, select/view another, relevant post.

Find the area on your 404.php page where you want to display your categories and posts lists and add the following:

<?php if (function_exists("ronalfy_list_categories_and_posts")) { ronalfy_list_categories_and_posts(); } ?>

Done almost..

In a nutshell what we’ve just done is;

• Told search engines and spiders, sorry.. we goofed but here’s tons more relevant stuff for ya.
• Display to folks the url they were following - so they don’t get mad or, think they’re goin nuts.
• Sent an email back to you, listing the offending URI so you can fix it.
• Given lost souls a plethora of link/cat/post options to keep `em on your site.
• Given ourselves a “warm-fuzzy” knowing we’re making the web a better place.

Now all that’s left up to you is to add your glorious style/css to make your 404 unique.

While getting ready for the upcoming stable-beta release of the open source version of mojoBlog, we’ve created a new projects website where you can find support, news and related forums on all things mojoBlog.

The new support site is called joomlify.com and currently offers up:

• The mojo-blog: a live-Demo of the latest working iteration of mojoBlog and available modules, plugins and assorted mojo-goodness
• The Forums: We’ve also setup a dedicated mojoBlog forum for all mojoBlog questions, bug reports and release requests.
• The Remository: Current and future GNU releases of mojoBlog can be found in our downloads section of joomlify.

The mojoblog blog will also feed news and links about mojoBlog, point releases, mojoBlog sightings and general news/press releases. Subscribing to the joomlify “newsletter” option on the front-page will bring you this info in the form of a daily email, direct to your inbox.