The AB Theme Framework
Author Buzz UK are working on a new WordPress Theme Framework specifically for authors. One of the things to come out from the work we have been doing for Author Buzz UK is that many themes only mostly fit the needs of writers. If you add in the need for …
New Plugin: AB Custom Post Meta
Author Buzz UK members can now get their hands on a new plugin – AB Custom Post Meta. For now, the plugin is exclusive to Author Buzz blogs. AB Custom Post Meta is a simple plugin that adds a new widget to display custom post data. When you write a …
Fighting Spam
Spam – I knew that it would happen sooner or later; I would just have rather spam happened later (or never). There are two significant areas of spam that we have to fight. User Registration Spam (and spam groups) Comment Spam The user registration spam is pretty much just a …
Importing content from other platforms
Today I set myself the task of finalising the import process for a number of large blogs waiting to move into the Author Buzz family. If only life was so simple. It turns out that the last time anyone tried to import from the platforms in question was several major …
Simplify the menus
If the message from our beta testers said anything, it said, “simplify things some more”. Of course, life being what it was, simplifying also means more complicated. The problem with putting everything you might want all within easy reach is that you pretty much end up putting everything within easy …
No bug found (but some UI improvements would help)
Time for a developer ramble about the state of things here at Author Buzz UK, bug tracking, progress, and article length. Solving Bugs We reported that a potential bug had been found with sign-ups. Thanks to some truly amazing beta testers we have found that there probably is no bug …
Oh no! Not now!
Right in the middle of NaNoWriMo, the server got the hiccups. First, the blogs stopped responding. Then the main site went down. I did what any stressed dev might do and restarted the server. Bad mistake! The MySQL server refused to come back up. Just totally refused. After some time …
Writers’ Word Bingo
For a project for a writers’ group called Sunday writers, I spent most of yesterday making a game – Word Bingo. I wrote the code in one day, this is how. The idea was not one that I came up with, the host of Sunday writers had the idea but …
Potential bug found in signup system
We have identified a possible fault with the sign-up process for Author Buzz. It only affects people signing up with email but not with WordPress.com. The fault appears to be that the email for new accounts never arrives. Sometimes. Possibly. Problems like this are a nightmare to debug because they do …
5 things WordPress.org really needs to start doing
Today was nothing if not frustrating. I spent hours looking for ways to set up a simple user-badges system and got nowhere fast. Given the huge number of pre-existing plugins that cover this task, I thought (wrongly as it turns out) that I could simply install one of them and …