Things might change though: a new service was launched today, called WP App Store.

After the Jetpack plugin, and more recently the WooDojo plugin, it seems that “container” plugins are becoming a new way to market your products to WordPress users.

Free and easy to install, these plugins are an easy way to get your foot through the door; once the plugin is installed, the user can activate as many features as he wants, and in the case of WP App store, he can purchase themes and plugins without leaving his dashboard.

I would have one suggestion though.

Enabling end-users to find themes and plugins without having to deal with FTP is great.
But wouldn’t it be great to find these new plugins in the Plugins menu, under a new tab? That would make things even easier for new WordPress users: once you have installed WP App Store plugin, you have one more plugin download option!

What do you think of WP App Store, and what’s your take on these new “Container” plugins?

WordPress-Related Projects to Watch on GitHub | Themergency.

Here is the new kid on the block: WPfunction.me

Careful though: it is sometimes better to create a small plugin than to paste yet another function in your theme!

WordPress Functions.php snippets
WPFunction.Me lets you quickly build all the functionality you need for your next WordPress project!

Luckily, Konstantin came up with a simple code snippet to add as a plugin o your local instance, that will print a list of all subdomains for that instance. You only have to copy that list and paste it in your Hosts file.

Simple, quick, and a real time saver: you should bookmark this post!

WordPress Multisite with Wildcard Subdomains – Konstantin Kovshenin.

Luckily, the core team decided to address the issue, and thanks to the ticket #17979 (quite an active ticket by the way!), widgets now get saved between themes. But why not push that idea further, and change a bit the way widgets are organized today?

Widget sidebars as menus, the Ipstenu way

Mika demonstrated with a series of 3 posts that we could improve the current widget system by completely revisting it, and handle WP sidebars like we manage menus today.

I like the idea because people might view widgets differently. It also makes it easier to manage multiple sidebar areas, so more flexibility in themes in the future.

Besides, I was never a big found of the drag-and-drop thing: it works great, but it is a bit annoying to use when some widgets are expanded, or when you registered a lot of different sidebars. I used to combine sidebars and conditional tags to be able to have different sidebars on different pages, and that quickly becomes quite a mess. Sure, you have a title and a description for each widget area, but the widgets page quickly gets incredibly long.

By viewing each sidebar in a different tab, we would avoid such issues. And by viewing available widgets in a checkbox list, it allows you to quickly browse and find the widgets you are looking for.

register_sidebar elements as options

I would like to add one more option to this Widgets page. This option would not be displayed by default, you could activate it through the screen options, and once you did, you would have access to the different elements associated with that widget area:

• before_title
• after_title
• before_widget
• after_widget

One place to find them, One place to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Today, if you are looking for new widgets, you look for it in the plugin repo: it is handy, there is a tag for it, and you can easily add them directly from your WordPress plugin page. But what if we push the concept a bit further? Mika proposed an area where all your available widgets would be listed. I think it would be great to have one more area, where you could search for available widgets in the plugin repo.

The problem is that many widgets are actually binded to a theme or a plugin, so you couldn’t list all widgets available for download there, but I think that would still be quite useful. Of course, that also means that some clean-up would have to be done in the repo. But Otto is working on that…

And you, what do you think about the widgets management today? Are you happy with it? Do you have any ideas to improve them?

For further reading and experiments

• WordPress Sidebars as Menus: Part 1
• WordPress Sidebars as Menus: Part 2
• WordPress Sidebars as Menus: Part 3
• Ticket #17979: Avoid losing widgets when switching themes

But what if, as a plugin author, you could add a stamp, a “certified” mention that would indicate that your plugin or theme was carefully tested? And as a user, wouldn’t it be reassuring to see that the code you are about to install on your site has been tested?

While the official theme repo already has its own Theme review team (with great guys in charge, and you can join them), that is something that does not exist for plugins.

Introducing a theme and plugin review service

That’s where DevPress comes in. Aside from their Theme club, they have decided to start a theme and plugin review service. The system seems quite simple: you upload your theme/plugin, pay, and a ticket is opened on DevPress where the team will come back to you with their remarks and feedback.

While the prices and conditions are not decided yet, I think it would be a useful service for those of us who want to get an external point of view on our code, or a second opinion before to launch a plugin. However, the price itself will play a big role in the success of their product. Indeed, while it might be worth to pay for a review when you sell your theme or plugin, people will probably think twice before to pay for a plugin they will release for free to the repo afterwards.

On the other hand, if the DevPress team makets it well, and if you can advertize that your plugin has passed the review afterwards, your plugin might draw more attention, since it is “endorsed” by popular WordPress developers!

What do you think about it? Will you be trying this service when it will come out?

Source: Launching a theme and plugin review service.

But Alex King and his team have now released a plugin that creates a great Post formats UI. A must-use!

I have always be bothered that if I wanted to have a nice-looking link format for, I had to use custom fields. Luckily, this plugin creates new meta boxes for each custom field that is needed to make your post formats look good.

WordPress Post Formats Admin UI : alexking.org.

The code is hosted on GitHub, so you can fork and contribute if you want to.

Instant WordPress

I am not sure which feature I prefer so far: there are so many new cool things coming up! The pointers, the new media uploader, the responsive admin interface, better handling of the permalinks… Which one is your favorite?

via WPTavern

However, it turns out taxonomies have existed for a long time and are not just available for posts, but for all object types. I for one had no idea about this!

Luckily, Justin Tadlock is here! In this tutorial, he covers the basics and examples of what you can do with custom user taxonomies in WordPress; a must-read, as with all tutorials from Justin.

Read the tutorial here: Custom user taxonomies in WordPress.