Right now, the WordPress dashboard is my least used and most visited page in the admin. I don’t know the history of why it was made and the decisions about it along the way. It seems like the why might be “because we needed a place for users to go when they logged in” and expanded from there.
George Stephanis and I created a nifty little WordPress plugin over the last couple days for funsies called Hugh.
Hugh allows to add a widget to your site that does one thing and one thing only. Hugh allows anyone on your site to change the color of your blog theme!
Who’s idea was it to go to Montreal in January?
I’ve been asked this question a few times when explaining to friends, coworkers, and my family that I was headed to Montreal in January. The answer was simple: “My team’s idea.”
There are the useful parts of the internet, the horrifying parts of the internet, and the brilliant parts. Here are just a few of the more delightful websites on the web filling up my bookmarks folder. Enjoy.
Over the past few months, I’ve been trying out various search engines to avoid being consumed by The Google. DuckDuckGo’s initial appeal for me was that it doesn’t track me, but over time, I grew fond of the way it displays results and some of the rando cool features.
Is there a place for permanency on the web?
If you walk into any library, you’ll find books older than any computer. There are archives of newspapers that go back decades. We have access to photos as old as the art of photography. There’s some sense of permanence with the archiving of these items.
I live in mild terror of a single question. It usually crops up when I meet someone for the first time. It’s not because the question is a difficult one for most people. In fact, it’s one many people enjoy answering.
What do you do?
Well, shit. I guess it’s time for me to attempt a meaningful answer to this. Here we go.
I’ve been thinking a little about the design of PowerPoint, WordPress, and WordPress.com lately. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about Edward Tufte’s criticism of how the design of the PowerPoint software is to blame for the Challenger disaster.
As few months ago, I decided to make an effort to see how much of my job I can do using only OSS (Open Source Software). I wanted to share my experience so far and welcome any tips/help you can share with me. This first post is about how I got started with a new computer/OS combo and not really much about design. The second (and third?) will be about using it to design.
This weekend, a whole new set of committers were announced at the first ever WordCamp US. I was among those #blessed with commit.
For those of you who don’t hang around making Internet all day, commit is just a term for the ability to send code somewhere. In this case, it members of the WordPress community entrusted me with the ability to approve and send code to the nightly build of WordPress. Historically, there haven’t been many people with this access so it’s a pretty big honor and a sign of trust. I take it very seriously.
Unlike Mel, I did not find out in a bar. I was on the way to the store to get some well-deserved drinks for one of the organizers when I got a ping from Nacin. It went something like this:
This was great news already. When I originally created my account, my username was “Michael Arestad”… With the space. This meant that no one could mention me on any WordPress.org site. I was thrilled to finally have this fixed for me!
Then he followed up with something fairly ominous:
Oh? There is? I was immediately pondering what that meant and trying to figure out scenarios where it would make sense to remove all spaces from names. Way off.
It turns out, the real reason for the name change was so I could become a committer.
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The next few days were a bit of a blur partly because the conference was crazy, but that one completely unreal fact was bouncing around my head like Flubber™ wreaking all sorts of havoc.
Then Sunday happened. The new committers were tasked with committing something by the end of the day at the Contributor Day. This is when reality set in for us. I can tell you both Mel and I freaked out quite a bit even submitting a small change.
I have to say I am incredibly honored. I am one among very few designers who have commit. I plan to do my very best help guide the design of WordPress and maybe (if I’m lucky and have help) simplify some of those totes cray CSS selectors.
I was given commit with brilliant folks who I have the utmost respect for. Congrats to Mel Choyce (also a designer!!!), Rachel Baker, Joe Hoyle, Eric Lewis, Mike Schroder, and Pascal Birchler!
Mel Choyce was one of the first people I worked with in my initial attempt to contribute to core. It was on CEUX (rest in peace) which was an effort to introduce content blocks into the editor. Content blocks bring people together.