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IRC Meetups/2005/May/May18Transcript

The State of the Codex

Carthik: We now have a (hopefully) well written set of pages describing how to contribute. Clicking on the "community portal" link in the sidebar on all pages will lead a person to a page describing how. so if anyone asks you how to contribute, you can point them to Codex:Community Portal or to Codex:Contributing

All codex related, "meta" pages now reside in the "Codex:" namespace (so its easier to find the pages)

Outstanding issues

  1. Removing duplicates, and merging together pages that don't differ from each other by much, and deleting the merged pages
  2. Copy editing all outstanding copyedits
  3. Lorelle's "lessons" project needs some trimming, and love. I find some lessons too long, so they need to be made to-the-point as much as possible

Future of Codex

Carthik would like to create an "index" page, listing relevant pages in a linear fashion. Sort of like "The WordPress Book" that should include a standard-style user guide, covering things like "adding a new page" and "adding a new link". Action oriented guide, that is.

Codex Action Items

WordPress.Org

Photomatt: it seems "docs" in the menu at wp.org is confusing people, maybe it should be renamed to "How-Tos" or "Guides". Westi recommends "Documentation". Carthik suggests changing the link to drop people straight into the Codex. Photomatt disagrees as people find the wiki format confusing but suggest that maybe the Codex should fit into the WordPress.org look.

Photomatt: Maybe the codex is dressed up to look like wp.org or /docs is opened up "to an external SVN repository the docs team can commit to" (editor note: whatever that means :) The goal will be login consistency between the Codex and WP.org/forums/etc.

Wp.org Action Items

Photomatt will look into integrating the Codex to match wp.org

Release 1.5.2

Photomatt: 1.5.2 is coming out very shortly, I just want to check with mdawaffe and ryan about the url_to_postid changes and if those have stablized. Relle twists Photomatt's arm into revealing that the release should come before the next meetup. Relle also liked how the testers and docs groups sent notes warning us of the upcoming changes. It helped to prepare for the possible trouble in the Forums.

Note: This was released as 1.5.1.1

wrc.os42.com

Relle: The site hosted a cool Theme viewer and it went bork. The site is now called the "WordPress Resources Centre" and says there will be no more viewer. Relle would like the viewer back as it was awesome.

Podz informs that the site was drawing too many resources and Shadow's host informed him that the viewer had to go or they would stop hosting him.

Photomatt said for Shadow to contact him. Hosting for resources of value to the WP community is available.

/extend

Photomatt revealed exclusive plans for wordpress.org/extend It will be a directory of plugins and themes keyed off the repositories (dev.wp-plugins.org and dev.wp-themes.org) and will eventually contain automagic install features building off drDave's Plugin Manager work. At the start, will just provide a central point of distribution and hosting for plugins and themes. There are security and platform independent implementation concerns that will slow the work on Automagic.

The discussion then flew off the handle about storing things in tags or trunks and fallbacks if there are no tags and scaring people with SVN browsing. Additional discussion regarding whether maintainers would be able to add/edit entries into the system and give control to the content's owners when they wanted to take over.

Carthik wants a service where people who dont want to deal with svn can submit their plugins/themes and maintainers could upload them to the repository for them.

Podz is concerned that unfinished work would be installed if it was available from Extend and that it would increase strain on the Forums. Photomatt suggests that the Extend Overlords would provide basic quality control.

Everyone agrees that SVN is hard to understand and Codex articles will be needed. Lots of talk about "tagging releases separate from the trunk" and "just tell them to tag" and "we must teach them how to tag"

Plugin licensing

Carthik: Are we safe in assuming all plugins are gpl-compatible ? Firas: FSF: "If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins." i think themes are very deeply entrenched in wp code. so they have to be GPL compatible as descirbed Carthik: there's the "interpreted languages" loophole though Carthik: the reason I asked about the license of plugins is cause I want to improve, and update LivePress, but unteins, the original author is not too active anymore

WP Identity update

Photomatt: design is locked, colors are next: http://photomatt.net/temp/wp_logo_4.02.gif

Relle asked when it goes public and Photomatt replies that it'll be part of the site redesign going live in July. Designs will come to the meetup for discussion/input before that. Relle volunteers for the PR team that Photomatt hasn't created yet.


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