wordpress™ wank

Apropos the need for a preview blog where you can see what a theme will look like without actually having to switch to it, could this be done via a one-click install of 2.1 on my own host, pulling down the themes from svn (it’s not so much that designers are incapable of learning how to use svn, btw. Just that we could really have done with some form of codex tutorial, rather than being left to the tender mercies of Google. Also, it’s sort of a big ask to expect end users to use svn rather than downloading zips) and popping in a theme switcher and some dummy content? Or would I need mu? Or would they just not work at all outside .com?

Widgets, though, would be a freaking nightmare. I don’t know how many are wp.com exclusive. And then there’s the blue navbar. And to fully emulate a wp.com environment I suppose I’d need to install snap preview. Which sticks in my craw just a little.

OK then, I’m just going to beg for you to make a theme-switcher widget that engtech could enable on http://wptheme.wordpress.com/, because the only thing missing from that site is that we can only see one theme at a time. I have no idea whether that’s technically feasible. Hell, I haven’t even checked whether the theme switcher plugins still work in 2.1, let alone whether they can be made mu-compatible.

(There, aren’t you glad I normally keep my hare-brained schemes within the confines of my own head?)

Say hello to our new four-column theme. You’ll notice that Matt has neglected to link to the designer or a download page. This is either because a) he wishes to take all the credit for himself (see also, the Garland mess) or b) said theme in its original form is spattered with sponsor links to Hostseeq, a crappy pay-per-click advertising site, as may be seen here.

(Oddly, this embedded spam, which end user is going to have to delve into sidebar.php to eliminate, is only on the themes.wordpress.net version. The zip on the author’s own site is free of it. So if, by any chance, you were wanting it for your .org site, I suggest you get it here.)

On a side note, three sidebars are major overkill unless you’re planning to give people the option to fill one of them with ads imminently.

Just saying.

Oh dear, just as I was advising you all to rush to the [ANNOUNCEMENT] thread and bask in its comedic potential it looks like Matt has slammed it shut and hid it from the boards. Now there’s a surprise. Who saw that coming?

Since I do not have the right of reply there, can I just point out that not all of us have a ‘long weekend’ because NOT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS AMERICAN. Ahem.

I think it might be time to leave for ever and ever and ever (again) in protest at such blatant censorship and cultural imperialism.

I venture back on to the .com forums even though I hate the design every bit as much as when I left for ever and ever and ever the other day, because I actually missed the place. (Compared to .org, it took me ages to get to my first leaving for ever and ever and ever, and when I did it was because of something stupid staff did rather than the posters or the volunteers.) And fairly quickly I stumble upon wank.

Sigh. Once more, I see, staff have made a decision from on high, have not bothered to consult or inform the regulars, and are nowhere to be found when it comes to dealing with the fallout. The authority of your new moderator gets undermined because it looks like you’re trying to sneak his new powers in under the radar and are scared to announce it to anyone. I don’t know whether this is because trent has only actually been active on the forums for three weeks. I don’t know whether he was consulted about becoming a mod or whether it was thrust upon him unasked for, as it was upon drmike. He seems pretty friendly with staff, judging by his blogroll, and is a mod on the bbpress forums. So I don’t whether he just started helping out like the rest of us, or whether he was asked to do so a few weeks ago with a view to becoming a mod. Either way, it looks much more like an Automattic appointment than a wordpress.com community one.

If the process had been a little less cloak-and-dagger I wouldn’t be wondering about this stuff. I would just be ‘yay! new moderator! about time!’ But like I keep saying, if you run around hiding things, it makes people wonder what you’ve got to hide.

I was commenting on the whole censorship imbroglio over on adam’s blog t’other day (you missed this? erotica bloggers were bitching about being kicked out of the global tags system. I tend to think the best riposte to this would have been to ship their content, traffic, and all their friends to a more welcoming host and let wordpress.com become a kids ‘n’ Christians ghetto, if that’s what they want. Bitching a lot and slamming the door on my way out, obviously.) My line remains — it’s shouldn’t be up to wordpress.com to protect me from content they (or whatever random who clicked ‘flag as mature’) think is unsuitable by hiding it from my tag searches or keeping it out of my dashboard. It’s up to me to tell wordpress.com whether or not I want or need it to be hidden from me. Which naturally got me thinking about COPPA again, and the fact that Automattic doesn’t ask for reassurance that we’re over 13.

So here’s a thread and here’s another where drmike has to think fast and censor the age of the original poster. Because a disclosure that they were under 13 would automatically put wordpress.com in violation of COPPA for knowingly having users under the age of 13 and not requiring parental permission to keep their email addresses on file.

It’s nice that they have an experienced webmaster looking out for them on this, because left to themselves I’m not sure they’d have a clue. At the moment, they’re still got deniability. Yes, drmike knows there are users claiming to be under 13, and anyone reading the forum can surmise that there are users claiming to be under 13, but we’re not employees so it doesn’t matter. But the moment an irate parent comes along saying ‘why did you let my twelve-year-old daughter sign up to this pervert-ridden site without even asking her to lie about her age to do so?’, the game is up.

I’m not sure kids can be reasonably expected to understand or abide by this ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ age policy they have in operation here. And I am not especially happy about the fact that adults can’t choose for themselves what they can and cannot view in the shared spaces of wordpress.com because of a child audience that officially doesn’t exist. So please. Flag the users, not the blogs.

Another day, another new theme. Which, judging by the comments, they apparently didn’t bother testing in IE6 before the launch.

Yeah, ok, so I don’t test in IE6 anymore either. I hate IE6. I fully sympathise with those who would like to pretend it doesn’t exist. But I’m not rolling out my designs across a multinational blog platform with over half a million sites and lots and lots and lots and lots of traffic. If I were, common sense would inform me that I needed to check that things worked in IE6, seeing as how it was only officially superseded a few months ago. Unless of course my stats were telling me that none of my visitors were using it anymore, which I somehow doubt is the case.

Or maybe they just thought it would be OK, since before they started messing with it, it apparently worked just fine.

I am starting to wonder whether there’s anything theme designers can do to protect themselves from having their work mutilated by wordpress.com. Slapping sponsor links on your themes apparently only works if you’re Scott. Putting a non-commercial licence on it or specifically asking them not to use it doesn’t seem to help either. Even staying away from the BBH seems not to be an infallible solution anymore. Suggestions?

theundersigned is appealing for help maintaining themes.wordpress.net. I would volunteer, but I know that I am way too flaky to maintain any meaningful commitment, and well-intentioned flakes are far more unhelpful than those who don’t volunteer at all. If you are less flaky, and have the time, please put yourself forward. I really don’t want to see the site scrapped because nobody wants to maintain it, and replaced by an ineptly administered outpost of the Empire of Matt.

(By way of incentive, I promise here and now I will never whine about the theme viewer again . Who knows, if it becomes fully operational, I might even mind myself uploading a theme or two.)

Matt thinks Tarski must be ‘coded badly’ since it didn’t sail unproblematically though the upgrade to 2.1.

Apart from this being a complete non sequitur, if it sucks so much why did he put it on wordpress.com?

The original post is also good on the brokenness of the links manager in 2.1, as is this forum thread, notable also for the shock! expressed at the suggestion that negative comments might have been censored and the inevitable denial of any such thing. Bless.

(How long it it since Kvetch was launched now? And the world of wordpress is such a happy smiley place that there’s not a sufficient database of comments to show yet? Hmm. Shall we be charitable, and blame it on excessive profanity on the part of the kvetchers?)

OK, I just saw the new look of the wordpress.com forums.

I know I’m change-averse and I never like anything, but honestly? Honestly? I hate it so much I’m actually quite emotional about it. I hate it so much I can’t even try to be funny.

They’ve turned it into a simulacrum of the news blog. Basically. With a big post at the top and everything else as a comment below. Now I sort of get see people might get blogs confused with forums, especially if there’s a lot of commenting going on, but I have to say this is the first time I have seen a support forum develop an identity crisis and start thinking it’s a blog. Because it’s not a blog. It is a forum.

And I know I’m being precious about this, but honestly? I can’t work in that environment. Commenting on people’s posts rather than answering them. Knowing that volunteers weren’t consulted about the redesign before it went live and that it turned out to have major usability flaws. How many posts does timethief respond to in that forum, and you can’t push the font up a point size or two to make it easier for her? Are the persons responsible for these changes willing to try actually using their shiny new blorum on a daily basis? No, didn’t think so.

So until I can figure out how to substitute an alternative stylesheet, no more .com support for me. I think I’ll see whether I understand anything over at .org these days.

(Oh, and I tested out 2.1. The Links Manager is even more broken than I’d anticipated. Heigh-ho.)