The damaging dispute between Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg has abated as Chris has decided to change his terms of service and put Thesis PHP code under the GNU Public License Version 2 to bring it in line with other WordPress themes.

The Intellectual Property License section now reads:

Thesis General PHP License

The PHP code portions of Thesis are subject to the GNU General Public License, version 2. All images, cascading style sheets, and JavaScript elements are released under the Thesis Proprietary Use License below.

Thesis Proprietary Use License

The Thesis Proprietary Use License is a GPL compatible license that applies only to the images, cascading style sheets, and JavaScript files contained in Thesis. These elements are the copyrighted intellectual property of DIYthemes and cannot be redistributed or used in any fashion other than as provided in this Agreement.

Chris announced the news on Thursday with some style:

Friends and lovers: Thesis now sports a split GPL license. Huzzah for harmony! #thesiswp

The impact of the relicensing exercise should stem the flood of users that decided to quit Thesis in response to the recent controversy and the threat of a potential court case. The outcome of any court case would have been uncertain as there are good arguments on both sides regarding the enforcability of the GPL. An expensive court case would have been damaging for Matt and potentially ruinous for Chris.

Thankfully, the GPLv2 licensing will allow Chris and his team to get their focus back on making his theme even better.

Version 1.8 will be out soon: new features are:

• Support for WordPress 3.0 Navigation Menu
• Moving functions of the Page Options settings and onto the WordPress category and tag admin pages
• A new skin interface – I will be doing some tutorials on this later
• Better performance due to recoding of the theme architecture

If you are a user of WordPress and a user of the Thesis Theme then you really to check out the remarkable discussion between Matt Mullenweg, head honcho of WordPress, and Chris Pearson, author of Thesis which took place on July 14 and was ably refereed by Andrew Warner.

I have great respect for both the antagonists, both acutely intelligent and commercially aware, but very different in style: Chris is fiery, passionate and arrogant while Matt is cool, thoughtful and calculated. And Matt’s business is probably worth at least 100 times Chris’s business so the match is very far from equal in terms of the resources and support each can bring to the table.

Both have made great contribution to software that I use to support my clients: Matt with WordPress, and Chris with the Thesis Theme, so I really would like these guys to get on well…

How The GNU Public License Works

The debate certainly opened my eyes wider regarding the GPL (GNU Public Licence). On initial reading it seems pretty fair and reasonable and the consequences tend to benefit the developers of software and the user community at large. So it sounds pretty good. This how it breaks down:

You are free to copy existing GPL software, amend, distribute and charge for that code as long as pass the same rights on with the distribution of the amended product.

From the developer perspective, it sounds fair: you get some code for free, you add to it to make it a bit better, and anyone else is free to do the same.

This is a bit like the work of the scientific community with the result being a growing, ever improving, FREE body of knowledge; except in this case the knowledge is encapsulated as software.

So far, so good, and hence you might ask: why don’t we develop all software this way?

Well the reason is… money. Or more accurately, GETTING PAID for WORK DONE. Let me elaborate.

In the case where the developer takes an existing piece of works and improves it, the GNU Public License makes perfect sense. However its rationale breaks down for me in other scenarios, specifically where original works are concerned.

Non Derivative Works

Let’s say I build a piece of non GPL software product from scratch that has a lot of business value to my customers. I sell that product to my clients for $200 and they use it and are happy. And then a few of my customers would like the product made available as a WordPress plugin so I add the few lines of code necessary to interact with WordPress.

The work is in no way a derivative of WordPress: it just happens to be able to be called from WordPress. However, due to WordPress’s plugin listing requirements I am obliged to make my WordPress Plugin licensed under the GNU Public License. No big deal you might say, but this is how the GPL works in practice…

The Problem With The GNU Public License

1. I can charge money for the software product(that bit is not a problem, but it is coming soon)
2. The person who buys it can also legally sell it and undercut my price (that’s a problem)
3. Another person who buys it can legally put the software on a free download site (and that’s an even bigger problem)

So my potential customers can either get my product from me for $200 (which was what I sold it for when it was not wrapped as a WordPress Plugin) or for free from a download site. Which are they going to choose?

GPL Software is Effectively Free (Zero Cost) Software

The GNU Public License has made my software product zero cost: I can only get customers to buy it from me if I offer additional services such as upgrades and support. And in reality, they are not buying the product, what they are in fact doing is buying support. Now, if I were happy to hire, train, motivate a large team of support staff that would be fine but let’s just say I don’t want to make money through running a large support team. Maybe my product is pretty good, easy to use and my clients don’t need to call often so I can hardly sell them expensive support contracts since they do not need them.

A few years ago I developed some software for a banking client and after I had completed they gave me a support contract for $800 monthly retainer for up to 4 hours support. After the initial six months they decided not to renew the retainer because they had not called me once. The software worked just fine without support.

Support and Services Are Not Always Viable

Now the support model may work if your are continually updating the software with new features but if the software is more narrowly focussed and simply does the job well then the GNU Public License does not offer the developer a way to get remunerated for the work in the same the way an author gets paid for their original creative works. This indicates that some software is just not suited to run under GPL if you want to get paid for your efforts.

Maybe this suggests that only buggy, difficult-to-use software that needs lots of support is ideal for GNU Public Licensing?

Except that’s not true, the multiple eyes that review and debug GPL code probably means it is of higher quality than proprietary software: after all, as Eric Steven Raymond, of ambassador of open source, proclaimed “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.

Sometimes I want to give free code to the WordPress Community; other times I don’t, because I have bills to pay, and perhaps sometimes, I have just worked too darn hard, and thought too much about the problem, to give it all away for nothing before I have had a chance to get something back

The problem remains: how to make money from GPL software? And just to be clear: making money from code is not a bad thing: even developers have families to feed.

How To Make Money From GPL Software with WordPress Plugins

The short answer is you can’t. At least not directly from selling fully GPL code. But the WordPress Plugin guidelines only require the plugin to be GPLv2 compatible which means you can license your plugin under for the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 3 which allows you to link to modules that are not fully GPLv3 licensed. [For more detailed information check out the GPL Compatiability Matrix. Good luck, you will need it when you get there.]

So we have an out. What we can do is follow Matt’s Mullenweg’s example with his Akismet plugin. Develop your a proprietary non GPL service hosted on another server and create a LGPL WordPress plugin that calls that service. We are then back to good old client server with a GPL client and a proprietary server. Hosting the clever bit of your plugin on your own server means that it is outside the GPL and hence you can protect your investment.

And if this circumvention of the full GPL is good enough for Matt then it is got to be good enough for all other WordPress Plugin Developers.

You can charge your customers for each use, a monthly charge or whatever, without risk of your code being copied(stolen), repackaged and resold as would be the case under GPL.

And when you have paid all your bills, cleared the mortgage, you can then license it under the GPL, and let others improve the code.

Back To Matt and Chris

So where does that leave us with Matt and Chris? Chris wrote the Thesis Theme that uses WordPress as the underlying platform. Let’s says 95% of the code is original and that Chris’s model of “how to build a website is overlaid on top of WordPress” is unique and hence is dependent on WordPress but not a derivative of WordPress (A 5% overlap cannot be rationally described as a derivative) through there is a good case to be made by Mark Jaquith that all WordPress Themes are a derivative of WordPress.

The bottom line is that the mere fact that WordPress causes the Thesis theme to run is sufficient for the GPL to be invoked (should Chris wish to distribute Thesis and he does given he wants to make some money). Therefore as WordPress is under the GNU Public License then Thesis needs to be GPL too (but that’s only if you believe in the GPL is enforceable)

Chris has said that since he is the creator of Thesis then he should not be dictated to by WordPress (and the GPL) and forced to license his code under their terms and not his. But that is not how the GPL is intended to operate.

Judging by Chris’s comments about the ‘inorganic nature’ of GPL in his otherwise organic business, he simply feels that the GPL is unenforceable because it removes protection of the rights of the creator of a piece of original work.

Maybe from Chris’s perspective, the “freedom” that GPL offers is the freedom for others to steal his work, and that is a freedom he does not want.

Rather than GPL being untested in court because it is solid (other than in Germany and in a case where significant copying of Linux kernel code had taken place so the judgment was clear), I think the converse is true: nobody has gone to court because they are looking at enormous legal and expert witness fees with little idea of how the judgement will go.

Do you spend $10 million with a 50% chance of success or settle out of court for $1 million – easy decision? You need a stubborn nature and deep pockets to play that game. But then Chris has a stubborn nature and Matt has deep pockets so maybe there will be a day in court to get a judgment on GPL (only for another judge to overturn the judgement on appeal 6 months later)

What Next?

Basically, if push comes to shove, then rather than go to court, I think Chris should move Thesis under GPL as a hard headed business decision to limit the risk to his business, help heal the wound in the WordPress community, and let him focus his attention on making Thesis even better.

The whole issue is one enormous distraction right now and is consuming too much energy that could be put into making WordPress and Thesis even better.

The GPL issue is simply not a good enough cause for Chris to risk losing his business over. It might be for him, on a point of principle, but it is not for these of us who are members of both the WordPress and Thesis communities.

As promised this is the non-hack solution to 3 teasers per row problem which involves only changes to custom_functions.php and custom.css- no changes to Thesis core code are required. This version should therefore survive upgrades to Thesis.

The solution uses jQuery and applies a simple algorithm. Firstly, remember that Thesis makes a ‘teaser box’ for each row and puts two teasers in each teaser box. My goal is to have 3 teasers in each teaser box.

Algorithm To Put Three Teasers in Each Teaser Box

The jQuery below processes every third teaser box starting at the second box and

• copies the first teaser into the previous teaser box
• copies the second teaser into the next teaser box
• removes the teaser box

The PHP code below is set up to have 3 teasers per row on the home page and 1 teaser per row on archive pages. Where we have 3 teasers per row it also shortens the post titles at the last complete word in the title to avoid wrapping text across multiple lines.

Also CSS is used to set the width of each teaser and on the home page to suppress the teaser text to leave just the title and the thumbnail image.

function add_jquery_stuff () {
 if (is_front_page()) {
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
function shorten(sometext,maxlen) {
  if (sometext.length<=maxlen) return sometext;
  var s = sometext.substr(0,maxlen);
  return (s.lastIndexOf(" ")<1?s:s.substr(0,s.lastIndexOf(" ")))+"...";
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready( function () {
  jQuery('.teaser').each(function(index) {
     if ((index % 6) == 2) {
         jQuery(this).clone().appendTo(jQuery(this).parent().prev());
     }
     if ((index % 6) == 3) {
         jQuery(this).clone().prependTo(jQuery(this).parent().next());
     }
  });
  jQuery('.teasers_box').each(function(index) {
     if ((index % 3) == 1) {
         jQuery(this).empty().remove();
     }
  });
 jQuery('.teaser').each(function(index){
    jQuery(this).addClass('teaser3').removeClass("teaser_right"); //3 teasers per row on home page
  });
 //shorten titles
 jQuery('.teaser a[rel=bookmark]').each(function(index){
    var t = jQuery(this).text();
    jQuery(this).text(shorten(t,24));
  });
});
</script>
<?php
 }

if ( is_archive()) {
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready( function () {
  jQuery('.teaser').each(function(index){
    jQuery(this).addClass('teaser1');  //one teaser per row on archive pages
  });
});
</script>
<php
  }
}
add_action('wp_head','add_jquery_stuff');

As with the earlier examples we tweak the CSS with classes teaser1 and teaser3 for where we want 1 and 3 teasers per row respectively. You need to set these widths according to the width of your page.

.custom .teaser1 { width: 55em; }
.custom .teaser3 { width: 193px; padding-right:6px; }
.custom .teaser3 .format_teaser p { display : none }

The last line in the CSS hides the text – the client just wanted to display an image as the teaser on the home page where we have 3 teasers per row.

Sample Home Page Teasers

Sample Archive Page Teasers

Potential Issue with thesis_hook_before_teasers_box Hook

I have not tested this solution where the ‘thesis_hook_before_teasers_box’ hook is being used. This badly named hook actually inserts content at the start of the teaser box before the first teaser rather than before the teaser box as its name suggests. I suspect that my solution will not work well if you use this hook.

If anyone has a problem with this jQuery solution please email me and will add a fix to handle this scenario – unless Chris Pearson decides to change the ‘thesis_hook_before_teasers_box’ hook to run before the teaser box first.

This is an example of using the WordPress Slickr Flickr Slideshow and Gallery Plugin to display a slideshow of photos in this camera review.

Buying a new Camera

Three weeks ago I decided to buy a new Digital Camera to replace by Fujifilm 2800Zoom which I have had for seven years. I was going to spend a week at a beach resort in Costa Rica on a technical seminar (seriously) and wanted to capture some decent photos of the scenery.

After checking out the various recommendations on Amazon I choose the Canon PowerShot A1100IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.5-inch LCD (Silver) for around $170. This camera is also available at £89.99 at amazon.co.uk in the UK

I made my buying decision based on a combination of features, picture quality, size, weight and of course price.

This is how the camera was rated:

Canon Powershot A1100 Features

The features that I was interested in were that:

• At least 8 Megapixel photos
• Video with decent sound capture
• Light weight and compact but large enough for me to operate with my big fat fingers
• Capable of uploading photos to a PC/Mac without sucking the battery dry
• Large enough capacity for me to shoot photos and video for a couple of weeks
• Around by budget of $200

What Does a Canon Powershot A1100 Look Like?

Here is a slideshow of photos of the new camera (the Canon) that I took with the old camera (the Fujifilm).

Canon A1100 Guides

Canon A1100 Box

Canon A1100 USB Reader

Canon A1100 Card

Canon A1100 Battery

Canon A1100 Screen

Canon A1100 Height

Canon A1100 Top

Canon A1100 Width

Canon A1100 Front

What Extras Do You Need For A Canon Powershot A1100?

The camera comes only with a 128MB card in the box which can hold around 50 photos and this was too few for my requirements. Also, I wanted a mechanism of downloading the photos from the camera that did not deplete the battery life further.

Therefore I would recommended two additional items to purchase with the a camera: a large capacity flash card and a USB flash memory card reader.

• 16GB San disk – stores up to 5000 images is around $40 for the SanDisk 16GB Ultra II 15MB/s SDHC SD Card in the USA or £18 for the SanDisk 16GB SDHC Secure Digital Card in the UK
• Flash Card Reader: remove the flash card from the camera and insert it into the card reader to upload your photos – only $4 for the Zeikos USB 2.0 SD/SDHC/MMC Flash Memory Card Reader in the USA and £1.64 for the Integral SD/SDHC Card Reader in the UK

What Did I Think Of The Camera?

Overall I am happy with the picture quality and the general feel and use of the Canon Powershot A1100 Camera.

My only real complaint about the camera was the delay when taking multiple photos but I can live with this as my subjects tend not to move too fast.

All in all, the Canon is a good quality, well priced, light weight camera for amateur photographers.

The camera is available at amazon.co.uk in the UK.

Test Galleria

Test Gallery

Test Slideshow

Cottage Lounge 1

Cottage Lounge from top

Cottage Lounge

cottagebed1

cottagebath

Example Small Slickr Flickr Slideshow

[/slickr-flickr id="34178127@N06" tag="sketches" items="4" type="slideshow" size="small" start="random"]

Example Slickr Flickr Slideshow of Dickens Lodge

[/slickr-flickr id="48727572@N08" tag="dickenslodge1"]

Slickr Flickr Gallery of Antiques

[/slickr-flickr id="39431406@N04" tag="online thrift&2" type="gallery"]

jQuery Issues Running Slickr Flickr, Flickr Gallery and TubePress

When running these three plugins together Slickr Flickr and TubePress operate normally but the lightbox of Flickr Gallery fails to operate. This is likely due to conflicts between the Slickr Flickr’s use of a standard lightbox and Flickr Gallery’s flightbox implementation of Lightbox. I also have WP Flickr Manager installed and this also installs a Lightbox

<script type='text/javascript' src='http://www.wordpresswise.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.3.2'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://www.wordpresswise.com/wp-content/plugins/flickr-gallery/flightbox/jquery.flightbox.js?ver=1.3.0'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://www.wordpresswise.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-flickr-manager/js/jquery.lightbox.js?ver=2.9.2'></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://www.wordpresswise.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-flickr-manager/js/wfm-lightbox.php?ver=2.9.2'></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.wordpresswise.com/wp-content/plugins/slickr-flickr/lightbox/js/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.wordpresswise.com/wp-content/plugins/slickr-flickr/lightbox/js/jquery.lightbox-0.5.js"></script>

What I will try and do is allow Slickr Flickr to piggy back off an existing Lightbox installation so it does not need its own. And when I am at it, I will look at adding some other Lightboxes too such as Lightbox2 and FancyBox

UPDATE: Fixed in Slickr Flickr Version 1.5 released May 8th, 2010.

Slickr Flickr Gallery

Lightbox is working below.

Flickr Gallery

Lightbox is now working below.

TubePress Gallery

Youtube Video library is operating correctly

BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes)

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Slickr Flickr WordPress Plugin

I have just completed development of a WordPress plugin which takes tagged photos from Flickr and displays them as a slideshow or as a gallery.

The plugin is called Slickr Flickr.

Why Slickr Flickr Is The Best WordPress Flickr Plugin

This is my somewhat biased opinion as to why it is a top Flickr plugin:

1. It is easy to add Flickr slideshows or galleries to posts, pages and sidebar widgets by using the slick-flickr short code
2. It displays slideshows of tagged photos from Flickr without any Flickr branding
3. There is no limit to the number of shows you can have of a single page
4. When you upload a new photo to Flickr and tag it then the photo automatically appears in your slideshow or gallery without your having to update your blog post
5. It supports Flickr photos at small, medium, large and original sizes
6. The slideshows can be configured as portrait or landscape
7. You can choose to show Captions underneath the slideshow which are autogenerated from the photo titles on Flickr
8. The plugin is easy to install, configure and customize
9. It is compatible with other Flickr plugins such as WP Flickr Manager which can be used to browse your Flickr photos directly from WordPress
10. It has a cool name

Below are some screenshots illustrating each of ten reasons why you should use this plugin to display your Flickr photos on your WordPress Blog.

Of course, I am using the Slickr Flickr plugin to display the screenshots. I choose a gallery rather than a slideshow as the screenshots are a mix of portrait and landscape images. I also set the size parameter to “original” as all my images are at least 1024 by 768 pixels as I wanted to make them as easy to read as possible.

To find out about the plugin more visit the Slickr Flickr Plugin Home Page

Many Ways To Integrate Flickr With WordPress

Over the last week, on behalf on a blogging client who has lots of pictures on Flickr, I have been researching different ways on integrating a series of Flickr photos into a WordPress blog. I was looking at two methods of displaying pictures: galleries and slideshows. A gallery displays a number of small thumbnail images and the visitor can click on the thumbnail and a bigger picture is displayed. With slideshows only a single normal size picture is displayed at any one time and the slideshow moves on to the next picture every few seconds.

After some research on Google I tried the following integration methods:

• Flickr’s own slideshows – using cut and paste of HTML code from Flickr
• Various WordPress plugins for Flickr – inserting galleries or slideshows using WordPress Flickr Manager, Flickr Gallery, FlickrRss, Flickr Widget, Flickr Photo Album, WP-Flickr and Flickr Slideshow Plugin

Flickr’s Own Slideshow

With this approach you do most of the work in Flickr and then cut and paste some HTML to include the slideshow in your blog. It looks like this

The steps to make a Flickr slideshow are:

1. Log in to your Flickr account
2. Select the photos of interest to make a collection
3. Click the Slideshow button
4. Click the Share This button
5. Select the HTML
6. Paste the HTML into your post on WordPress

My client had a few issues with the Flickr slideshow. The main issue was the lack of captions. Despite many requests to Flickr there is no way to have captions switched on by means of a parameter. It is in the control of viewer (if they can work it out) to switch on “Information” but as well as captions this displays other information such as who took the photo and the date. This tended to spoil the visual appearance of the photo.

The other critical issue was that when he added new photos he did not want to have to rebuild the slideshow and repeat the ‘cut and paste’ exercise.

Flickr Gallery WordPress Plugin

The most appealing of the galleries was that produced by the Flickr Gallery WordPress plugin. This delivers the photos as thumbnails and uses a Lightbox to display them full size. It looks like this:

The steps to build the gallery were:

1. Log in to your Flickr account
2. Select the photos of interest and give the group a unique tag
3. Back in wordpress paste a single line into your post that uses the flickr-gallery shortcode and refers to the tag. For example [flickr-gallery mode="tag" tags="bahamas" tag_mode="all"]

This solved the problem of captioning and made the updating stratghforward: after uploading a new photo to Flickr all you need to do is tag it and it will appear on your WordPress site without having to make any changes. This plugin did the job well for a gallery but what my client wanted was the ability to display his photos as a gallery or a slideshow. Also the plugin also did not work when other Flickr plugins were installed.

Display of Flickr Photos in a Gallery OR a Slideshow

In the end I came up with a solution that meets his requirements of being able to display either a gallery or slideshow, is easy to configure, allows control over captioning, is automatically updated when new photos are uploaded to Flickr and tagged, does not conflict with other Flickr plugins and finally, allows multiple galleries or slideshows per page.

Setting up a gallery or slideshow involves two steps:

1. In Flickr (or using the WordPress Flickr Manager plugin), you tag the photos with a specific ‘tag’ such as ‘bahamas’ in my example.
2. On your blog you edit the post and insert a single line of PHP where you want to display your photos.

Displaying A Flickr Gallery

<?php require_once ('flickr_show.php'); echo flickr_show("bahamas","items=10"); ?>

This example will display a gallery of up to ten photos in my flickr account that are tagged with ‘bahamas’. It looks like this

Displaying A Flickr Slideshow

<?php require_once 'flickr_show.php'; echo flickr_show( "bahamas", "type=slideshow&items=10&delay=5"); ?>

This example will display a slideshow with captions of up to ten photos in my flickr account that are tagged with ‘bahamas’ with a delay of 5 seconds between slides. It looks like this

Nassau Cruise Ship

Steel Band at Atlantis

Atlantis Aquarium

Grand Bahama Hotel Grounds

Me Chilling

Grand Bahama Downtown

Tropical Blue Sea

Cool Art in Hotel Room

Easy To Use But Difficult To Install

While this solution works well, it is relatively complicated to install: I needed to install two PHP files, two javascript files, a jQuery plugin as well the Exec PHP WordPress plugin. This required me to FTP some files on to the server in the right places for it all to work properly. I did this for my client and he is happy. But how can I make the installation easier if I want to use my Flickr Slideshow on other blogs?

The answer is obvious: I need to turn my custom PHP code and javascript into a WordPress Plugin.

New Flickr Plugin For WordPress

The WordPress plugin will do all the installation tasks meaning that once the plugin is installed all the user needs to do is use a shortcode.

Using the Plugin

At blogging time: all you will need to display a gallery of Flickr photos tagged with bahamas is:

[slickr-flickr tag="bahamas"]

If you want to display an automatic slideshow of up to ten photos tagged with bahamas without captioning with a slide transition delay of 4 seconds then use

[slickr-flickr tag="bahamas" items="10" type="slideshow" delay="4" captions="off"]

Plugin Settings

To configure the plugin the minimum you need to do is enter your flickr id – this is the 12 character code that appears in your browsers URL when you click the “You” link when logged in to your Flicker account (it will look something like 47103510@N00) or alternatively use the Flickr Id Lookup facility.

However, you will also be able to change the defaults for:

• type: allowed values are “gallery” or “slideshow”: initial default is “gallery”
• items: the maximum number of photos to display: initial default is 20
• captions: allowed values are “on” and “off”: initial default is “on”
• delay: the delay in seconds between slide changes: initial default is 5

You will also will be able to change colors and font simply by editing the plugin’s CSS or adding a few lines for custom.css if you are a Thesis theme user.

My goal is to release the plugin within two weeks. About two days to write the plugin and the rest of the time on installation documentation, faq and a training video on how to set up the plugin.

Final Word on The Slickr Flickr Plugin

Today is the 28th February and the plugin has been completed and submitted to WordPress for inclusion in their plugin directory. I hope to put it live and make it available for download early next week.

Check out the Slickr Flickr Plugin Home Page

WordPress Permalink Controversy – SEO versus Performance

The choice of Permalink structure in WordPress has prompted a lot of discussion with the ‘experts’ falling into two camps; SEO experts and WordPress purists. Each group makes an logical assessment from their own perspective.

Before we get into the differing views, some background on permalinks.

What are Permalinks?

Permalinks are the permanent URLs of your individual blog posts and pages. They are what are used to link to your site and also they are what the Search Engines use to index your site. In WordPress you can replace the WordPress URL of your posts which looks something like www.example.com/?p=47 by a structure that can include the post name, category, tag, author, year, month, day, etc. This ‘pretty’ URL is more readable and also increases the likelihood of a person clicking on the link if the link contains some of the keyword or phrases that the person is looking for.

Why is it Important To Get The Right Permalink Structure At The Start

If you change your permalinks you will lose all your search engine ranking positions for your existing pages UNLESS you add Redirect statements in your .htaccess file that maps the old page URLs to the new page URLs. Therefore normally you never want to change your permalinks and hence it is important to get them right at the start when you set up the blog before you add any posts.

Why is there is a Performance Problem with WordPress Permalinks?

When you try access a page using the permalink, WordPress has to work out what post the permalink refers to. It does this using its rewrite rules to convert the permalink to a post id.

WordPress keeps its rules for converting pretty URLs into post ids in the option_value column of the row in the wp_options table where the option_name is rewrite_rules. This field gets pretty big: several tens of thousands of characters in size in fact, and it keeps growing according to the number of pages, number of attachments and the number of categories, tags, authors, etc on the blog. This means WordPress has a lot of rewrite rules to sort through every time you access a post or an attachment.

The algorithms that WordPress use are more efficient at sorting through numeric structures than text ones. WordPress documentation describes its text sorting algorithms as its ‘verbose’ rules and therefore recommends its users to employ permalink structures that start with %post_id% or %year%/%monthnum%/%day%.

In a nutshell, WordPress rewrites rules are generally inefficient but permalinks starting with numbers are a lot faster then permalinks starting with text.

Now back to the two different camps of thought.

WordPress Purists Follow WordPress Permalink Recommendation

The Purists toe the WordPress line. They don’t like inefficiency and want their site to respond as fast as possible. The purists like the SEO benefits of having the postname in the permalink but are not willing to sacrifice performance. Their chosen permalink structure is typically /%post_id%/%postname% or /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.

SEO Experts Want More Visitors And Ignore WordPress Permalink Recommendations

The SEO guys are pragmatists; they want more traffic and use meaningful urls have better click through rates. They don’t mind the poorer performance of the blog as in most cases it is hardly noticeable, especially if caching is enabled. They don’t believe it trying to solve performance problems until they happen.

A SEO slanted view produces a permalink structure such as /%postname%, /%postname%-%post_id%, or even /%category%/%postname% to maximize the number of keywords in the URL

Is Performance or SEO More Important?

This is an easy answer for me: SEO is more important.

My reasoning is as follows: SEO must be good and performance must NOT be bad.

I want to maximize the number of visitors to my site and a pretty URL helps with that. I can live with the trade off of a 5% slower blog with 5% more visitors.

Performance is unlikely to be an issue for me for five reasons

• I don’t have thousands of visitors accessing my blog at the same time (at least not right now)
• I don’t have thousands of pages on my blog (at least now yet)
• I host all post attachments such as images and videos on Amazon S3 to ensure the good performance under high traffic. As well as taking the heavier image traffic off my WordPress server, this keeps the rewrite rules simpler by not having attachments.
• I have installed the WP Super Cache plugin which means pages are returned from a cache rather than being fetched from the database every time. This probably gives a one hundred fold increase in the capacity of the blog to serve pages to visitors
• I host my blog on a Liquidweb VPS rather than a shared host account which delivers much more consistent performance

The last three measures mean that WordPress page content and media content is delivered fast and consistently so if one of my posts does get the Digg effect then the blog is still able to cope comfortably under the load.

Why it is useful to include the Post_Id in the Permalink Structure

Quoting from the WordPress Permalink Guide

If you want to list your site in Google News, one of the requirements is to have at least three digit identifier at the end of every url.

This is not quite accurate in two respects: firstly the three digits can appear anywhere in the URL; and secondly there is an alternative to having the 3 digits which is to use Google News Sitemaps

I do like to have the ability to submit the blog to Google News but don’t want to have the hassle of maintaining a news sitemap so I do use the post_id.

What Permalink Structure Is Best

The two permalink structures I recommend are:

• /%post_id%/%postname% ; and
• /%postname%-%post_id%

Is there really much of a difference regarding the ‘clickability’ of these URLs

• www.example.com/123/how-to-make-millions-of-dollars-overnight; and
• www.example.com/how-to-make-millions-of-dollars-overnight-123
• www.example.com/how-to-make-millions-of-dollars-overnight

I think probably not. The third is slightly better but the post_id is not particularly off-putting in the first two URLs.

My recommendations for permalinks are therefore as follows:-

If you have a blog with thousands of pages, or thousands of attachments hosted on your WordPress server, then go for the first option otherwise go for the second option

For big blogs use:

/%post_id%/%postname%

For small and medium blogs use:

/%postname%-%post_id%

As a final word there are some scenarios where I do consider the using the category in the permalink but only under specific conditions where the blog is small and there is a single category for each post and the category is static. Again the SEO benefit of having the keyword laden category named is traded off against the loss on performance.

How To Shorten Post Titles that Wrap When Displayed as Teasers

When displaying the post title in a teaser, Thesis displays the whole title. This can be too long for the line and hence wrap, which causes the adjacent teasers to be misaligned. This can make the make look a bit untidy: especially in the example of the previous post where we have three teasers per row where we only want to display the post title and a thumbnail image.

To get around this I used jQuery to truncate longer titles and add an ellipsis (…)

The changes to custom_functions.php were as follows

add_action ('wp_head','add_jquery_stuff');  //put the query in the header

function add_jquery_stuff () {
?>
     <script type="text/javascript">
          function shorten(sometext,maxlen) { return ((sometext.length<=maxlen)?sometext:(sometext.substr(0,maxlen-3)+"...")); }
     </script>

     <script type="text/javascript">
     jQuery(document).ready( function () {

          jQuery('.teaser h2.entry-title a').each(function(index){ //gets the link in all teaser headlines
                var t = jQuery(this).text();
                jQuery(this).text(shorten(t,40)); //truncate to 40
          });
     });
    </script>
<?php
}