Monday, April 25, 2011

Summer WordCamps 2011

Looking for something fun to do during your summer vacation? Why not check out a WordCamp! WordCamps are locally-organized casual conferences of, by, and for WordPress users, developers, and enthusiasts just like you. The focus of a WordCamp is to foster face-to-face connections and collaboration among the local WordPress crowd, but there are usually some out-of-towners there as well. Here are the WordCamps that have been approved so far for the summer:

April 16: WordCamp Seattle in Seattle, WA. This weekend! After taking a year off, WordCamp Seattle is back with tracks for bloggers, designers, and developers. This year they’ll feature a lineup including presentations by both local speakers and visitors like core committer Andrew Nacin, as well as an Ignite session of lightning talks at the end of the day.

May 5: WordCamp Vancouver (Developer Edition) in Vancouver, BC. This one-day WordCamp is aimed purely at developers working on the WordPress platform, and will not have content aimed at bloggers (as previous Vancouver WordCamps have). I predict we will start seeing more of these types of niche WordCamps moving forward, because they will mean smaller, more intimate events that allow more collaboration (and make it easier to find venues!). Note that we’re working with the organizers to get the tickets to a more reasonable price, so keep your eyes open this week if you’ve held off on buying a ticket because of the price tag.

May 7: WordCamp Switzerland in Brugg, Switzerland. This one will cover a wide range of topics, including getting started with WordPress, advanced development topics, BuddyPress, and an inside look at running a WordPress-based business.

May 14: WordCamp Orange County in Orange, CA. Already sold out! Orange County had their first WordCamp last year, and the organizers have put together another great event this time around.

May 14: WordCamp Paris in Paris, France. One of the last true unconference-style WordCamps, the Paris group will plan their schedule the morning of the event like they do at BarCamps. WordCamp Paris had one of the best WordCamp t-shirts ever a couple of years ago. And it’s in Paris in the spring.

May 21–22: WordCamp Raleigh in Raleigh, NC. Repeat organizers from the Raleigh WordPress Meetup Group are just starting to select speakers and put together their plans, but if it is anything like last year, the venue will be packed with WordPress professionals (and maybe there will be cookies). I’ll be attending this one, as will Nacin.

June 4–5: WordCamp Reno-Lake Tahoe in Reno, NV. Organized by a WordPress core UI group contributor, WordCamp Reno-Lake Tahoe is taking place in Reno and has a packed schedule full of visiting experts.
June 11–12: WordCamp Kansas City in Overland Park, KS. With publisher, designer, and developer tracks, Kansas City’s WordCamp will have a little something for everyone, presented in large part by local speakers.

June 17–19: WordCamp Columbus in Columbus, OH. WordCamp Columbus has a new organizer this year and is bringing the focus more firmly onto WordPress (and less on social media). Their 3-day event includes an entire day for newbies, and another for non-profits, a nice addition to the usual blogger/developer tracks.

July 9–10: WordCamp Montreal in Montreal, Quebec. This group consistently puts on a great every year. If you register now, you can still get a $10 discount and get both days for only $30 (with sessions in both English and French to reflect the bilingual nature of the city). Montreal plays host to a number of festivals throughout the year, and this weekend is no different, including festivals for the arts, comedy, tango, and even circus arts.

July 16: WordCamp San Diego in San Diego, CA. First WordCamp in San Diego! They have talking about this for over a year, and are now starting to really ramp up the planning. They’re finalizing their venue right now, and I would expect a great roster of speakers.

July 16-17: WordCamp Portsmouth in Portsmouth, UK. The annual WordCamp UK that moves from city to city each year alights this year in Portsmouth. This one is notable because Mike Little, co-founder of WordPress, is part of the organizing team.

July 23–24: WordCamp Boston in Boston, MA. Another one just about to lock down some details and get starting with speaker selection, etc. An easy train ride from so many places, and not in the middle of winter this year!

July 30-31: WordCamp Chicago has new organizers and is a new venue this year. A call for speakers, supporters, and volunteers will likely be posted sometime next week.

WordCamp Portland is looking for a venue before deciding on a date this year, as it has outgrown the space it’s used the past two years, but hopes to happen in September. If you would be interested in donating a venue to this popular event, please contact them.

We’ll hold off on posting fall events until later in the summer since there a lot in the planning stages now. To get the most up-to-date information, visit WordCamp Central.

Hope to see you at a WordCamp soon!

For Free consultation on regarding Wordpress Expert, Wordpress Programmer, Wordpress Development, Wordpress Customization log on to http://www.dckap.com
Source: http://wordpress.org  

Friday, April 22, 2011

Rails 3.0.7 has been released !!!

Hello everyone! I've released Rails version 3.0.7!
I want to say thanks to Santiago for handling the release candidate gems. He's on vacation, so I get to do the real thing.
The main change in this release is to fix a performance regression in ActiveRecord that was introduced in version 3.0.6.

Changes

For a web friendly view, check out the compare view on github.
For those that want the TL;DR of the commits, here are the pertinant CHANGELOG entries for each project:

activesupport

  • Hash.from_xml no longer loses attributes on tags containing only whitespace [André Arko]

activerecord

  • Destroying records via nested attributes works independent of reject_if LH #6006 [Durran Jordan]
  • Delegate any? and many? to Model.scoped for consistency [Andrew White]
  • Quote the ORDER BY clause in batched finds - fixes #6620 [Andrew White]
  • Change exists? so records are not instantiated - fixes #6127. This prevents after_find and after_initialize callbacks being triggered when checking for record existence. [Andrew White]
  • Fix performance bug with attribute accessors which only occurred on Ruby 1.8.7, and ensure we cache type-casted values when the column returned from the db contains non-standard chars. [Jon Leighton]
  • Fix a performance regression introduced here 86acbf1cc050c8fa8c74a10c735e467fb6fd7df8 related to read_attribute method [Stian Grytøyr]

actionmailer

  • remove AM delegating register_observer and register_interceptor to Mail [Josh Kalderimis]
Source: http://weblog.rubyonrails.org

Friday, April 15, 2011

WordPress For iPad Readers

With the launch of Apple’s iPad we have seen the future of computing and it is touch. Nothing matches the visceral feel of navigating your digital world with your hands. The past four months we’ve been working closely with Onswipe to bring your iPad visitors our vision of what a blog can look like re-imagined for a touch experience.


Our iPad-optimized view is app-like in its functionality, but pure HTML5 goodness on the backend: it supports touch interactions, swiping, rotation, and many other features of the iPad. Like when we launched our smartphone-optimized WP-Touch integration in 2009 (now responsible for over 150 million page views a month) this is immediately available and active on the over 18 million blogs on WordPress.com.
There are some fun options to play with too. If you browse to Appearance -> iPad in your Dashboard you can:
  • Have the theme use an image from your recent posts as a cover.
  • Upload a logo to showcase your brand or personality on the cover.
  • Upload an image to be used as a loading graphic when visitors add your site to their home screen.
  • Switch fonts.
  • Choose from 9 different skin colors, to best match the feel of your site.
  • Enable or disable the whole thing.

When you tap to view a post, you get to see the full content with a slick commenting interface and social sharing tools for Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress.com literally at your finger tips. It’s a lot of fun browsing sites with Onswipe.

Onswipe has also made the plugin available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites.

On WordPress.com we’re seeing about 750,000 page views a day from iPad visitors and it continues to rise. New tablet devices seem to be coming out every time you turn around. In the coming months we’ll be expanding to work with other popular tablet devices, but we chose to focus on the iPad first because… well it’s cool.

For Free consultation on regarding Wordpress Expert, Wordpress Programmer, Wordpress Development, Wordpress Customization log on to http://www.dckap.com
Source: http://wordpress.org 

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Ruby Hero Awards 2011


It’s that time again to take a moment to think about those who have impacted the Ruby community this year but have not received the recognition they deserve. We have given away eighteen awards in the past three years at Railsconf, and this year we are preparing to give away six more.

But we need your help.


So, if you know someone who has contributed greatly this year please take a moment to show some gratitude by nominating them on RubyHeroes.com. In two weeks the Ruby Heroes from last year will look at the nominations and decide who should receive the awards (this way there’s no popularity contest). However, your nominations do matter, so please take a moment and spread the gratitude.
The winners will be announced live on stage at Railsconf 2011.

Source: http://weblog.rubyonrails.org

Sunday, April 10, 2011

WordPress 3.1.1

WordPress 3.1.1 is now available. This maintenance and security release fixes almost thirty issues in 3.1, including:
  • Some security hardening to media uploads
  • Performance improvements
  • Fixes for IIS6 support
  • Fixes for taxonomy and PATHINFO (/index.php/) permalinks
  • Fixes for various query and taxonomy edge cases that caused some plugin compatibility issues
Version 3.1.1 also addresses three security issues discovered by WordPress core developers Jon Cave and Peter Westwood, of our security team. The first hardens CSRF prevention in the media uploader. The second avoids a PHP crash in certain environments when handling devilishly devised links in comments, and the third addresses an XSS flaw.

We suggest you update to 3.1.1 promptly. Download 3.1.1 or update automatically from the Dashboard → Updates menu in your site’s admin area.

Our release haiku:

Only the geeks know
What half this stuff even means
Don’t worry — update

For Free consultation on regarding Wordpress Expert, Wordpress Programmer, Wordpress Development, Wordpress Customization log on to http://www.dckap.com
Source: http://wordpress.org

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Rails 3.0.6 has been released!

Hi everybody! Rails 3.0.6 has been released!
Let's get the serious business out of the way first:

Rails 3.0.6 contains an important security fix! Please upgrade!

Rails versions 3.0.x prior to 3.0.6 contain an XSS vulnerability. The vulnerability manifests itself via the auto_link method. The auto_link method will automatically mark input strings as "html safe" even if the input is from an unknown origin.
For example:
<%= auto_link(params[:content]) %>
If the "content" parameter contains malicious javascript, that script will be rendered without being escaped.

How can I protect myself?

  • Upgrade to Rails 3.0.6, then content passed to auto_link will be automatically escaped for you.
  • If you cannot upgrade Rails, then apply the patch found here. Then auto_link content will be escaped for you.
  • If you cannot upgrade Rails, or apply the patch, then change your calls to auto_link to call sanitize like so:
    <%= sanitize(auto_link(params[:content])) %>
    If you trust the input, then change to this
    <%= raw(auto_link(params[:content])) %>

Credits

Thanks go to Torben Schulz for reporting this issue!

Monday, April 4, 2011

Google Summer of Code Program (GSoC) - WordPress a mentoring organization for talented students!


Student applications are currently being accepted by WordPress to work with them this summer, and the deadline to apply is April 8 2011. Interested students who want to develop for WordPress please read on.

GSoC Logistics:
  • 175 mentoring organizations (including WordPress)
  • Enrollment in an accredited college/university is mandatory
  • Coding period is May-August
  • Earn $5,000 upon completion of the project
  • Please see GSoC FAQ for more information
WordPress logistics:
  • Mentors include WordPress core developers, plugin authors (including BuddyPress and bbPress), mobile app developers, and WordPress professionals.
  • Submit any project based what you can do and envision.
  • This year, in addition to accepting project proposals for the main WordPress web app, WordPress is also encouraging applications for projects with the WordPress mobile apps (iOS, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Phone 7), for community-developed plugins like BuddyPress and bbPress, and even standalone plugins that could become community projects. Check out our Codex page on GSoC 2011 for some ideas.
  • 15 students were mentored by WordPress last year, and around the same will be selected this year too.
If you’re a college student/developer, you are encouraged to apply!

For Free consultation on regarding Wordpress Expert, Wordpress Programmer, Wordpress Development, Wordpress Customization log on to http://www.dckap.com