With many people still coming to grips with the new features from WordPress 3.3  the core team wanted to put a firm focus behind the scenes with performance improvements in many areas of the site, and a massive improvement in the database querying which will massively help very large databases.

With nearly 480 tickets slated for WordPress 3.4, there are a lot of changes taking place to the WordPress software, but ultimately the changes you should see in your WordPress site will be very minor, things like HTML will now be supported in image captions, Improvements to the custom header functionality and many other small UI changes.

Under the surface or WordPress there have been improvements to the help screen api, i18n, database queries and much more. You can see the codex page here and noticeably, not a lot happening in the UI department, but a lot of work in the stuff that developers will understand.

Basically, this version of WordPress will be a smooth update for everyone who has a normal installation, and standards compliant themes and plugins on their site.

Uploading Images

This is where WordPress really shows some of its strengths, All you have to do is upload the images while you are in the post or page editing page. When you upload the images from here they are automatically attached to the post or page as attachment images. Just one shortcode later and you will have an image gallery displaying on your site.

The WordPress Gallery Shortcode

At its most basic usage it is simply [gallery] this will use the defaults to display the WordPress gallery.

Most WordPress gallery features can easily be edited using attributes for the shortcode the size of the images the number of columns even the order of the images can be edited.

• id – This attribute if set will use the gallery from a post I’d that is not currently being displayed.
• columns – This will edit the number of columns that are displayed in the WordPress gallery on your site
• link – This will change the location of the link the image links to. Default options are image and file useful if you are having a JavaScript popup to display the full size image in an overlay
• image size – This changes the size of the image to display in your WordPress gallery. This can be any default size or any custom image size you have running in your site
• order – This can be set to ASC or DESC and changes the order of the images in your WordPress gallery
• order by – This changes what defines the order your images are displayed in your WordPress. The default is “menu_order” but some other options are: “ID”, “title” and “date”

Using Attributes

Attributes in any WordPress shortcode can be modified like so:

[gallery attribute="value"]

A general rule of thumb is to have the quotation marks around the value as this enables you to have spaces if necessary in the value. Also you should have a space between any attributes.

Gallery Shortcode Examples

As you can see from the below examples, there are many options available to change the way the WordPress gallery is displayed on your site.

[gallery columns="3" size="thumbnail"]

[gallery columns="3" size="thumbnail" link="file"]

[gallery columns="2" size="medium" link="file"]

[gallery columns="1" size="full" link="file"]

WordPress Themes are layout files that specify to an Internet browser how to render and display your WordPress website on a computer screen.

There are several ways that users of WordPress can theme their WordPress websites.

WordPress offers thousands of free themes that have been built by the WordPress development community. If you have the time, you can wade through the options at WordPress.org.

In my experience, though, the standard of the themes tends to be pretty basic.

After a freebie, you can look at purchasing a premium WordPress theme.

Here you have the choice of different suppliers, such as Woo Themes and Elegant Themes. A WordPress web administrator seeks out a layout they like and they buy the theme off-the-shelf.

Premium themes do cost a modest sum, but more time has been spent in the coding to ensure that they look fantastic on screen.

Finally, WordPress users can opt for a fully-customised WordPress theme built to their specific preferences.

Perhaps a company has a branding, a look and feel, or specific layout requirements that they cannot replicate off-the-shelf. A fully custom WordPress theme, such as the themes created by TigerStrike Media, can solve this issue for users.

The big benefits of a custom WordPress theme include:

• Nobody else has it. You won’t head online and see a site like yours pop up.
• You can customised every aspect of your layout.
• And some WordPress theme developers (such as us) offer after-sale support to ensure you’re happy with your WordPress theme.

If you’re looking for a custom WordPress theme, built in Australia not offshore, talk to Tiger Strike Media.

You’ll find us cost-effective and ready to help.

Of course if you have modified core files or plugins then upgrading WordPress is always going to be a nightmare, that is why you should never “hack” WordPress or plugin files.

WordPress has had 3 major updates this year with a plethora of new updates and new things to learn.

WordPress 3.1

This version of WordPress introduced the first version of the admin bar, which has essentially made redundant things like edit_post_link() by including a static bar at the top of the screen at all times (unless you have turned it off or it has been disabled!) which has useful links to edit the current post, page, category, custom post type, add new ones, or manage users. this can be added to or managed programmatically, which is great for plugin developers to enable easy links to plugin added functionality.

The other big update with this version was post formats which were an easy way to display different types of posts whether it is a quick Facebook like status update or an in depth article in slightly different ways.

WordPress 3.2

This version was all about optimizing and cleaning up what was already there. And with this fairly major rework of a lot of the core code, they also updated the admin UI.

WordPress Admin, uploads and general page load time now happen a lot faster with the update in requirements to PHP and MYSQL.

WordPress 3.3

The latest and greatest major version update was just released into the wild in December and includes a major revision to the uploading process to incorporate plupload to enable drag and drop uploading to the media uploader.

Wrap Up

All up, WordPress is a much leaner, meaner CMS machine than it was this time last year, with all these new updates and things to learn and adapt to it is no wonder that the many users have been overwhelmed this year.

Early talk for WordPress 3.4 is saying that the focus will be on making it easier for you to make your site look the way you want it to. We will be keeping you updated on the progress of the next version when updates become available.

The announcement stated that beginning in January, users on XP will be upgraded to IE8 and users on Vista and 7 will be updated to IE9. One look at the statistics from stat counter show that in December and January, the total usage of IE 6 and 7 totals less than 7% worldwide, To me that means that it seems quite feasible to start phasing out support for IE7 in general web development.

Although IE8 does not support all the CSS3 and HTML5 features of modern browsers, it does have much fewer bugs and better support than IE7.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments.

Technological

The world seems to have picked up the pace with updates and product version releases, Browsers release new versions 3 or 4 times a year ( real browsers that is ), WordPress had 2 major releases this year and many minor versions, iPhones can now understand what you want when you talk to it like a personal assistant, I even saw someone asking what people would like in the specs for CSS4 ( which is completely useless when we as professional web developers must still support old versions of Internet Explorer ).

Microsoft has announced that they will begin forcing upgrades of the dinosaur browser Internet Explorer this year and in fact a quick peek at the statistics provided by StatCounter will tell you that IE7 is almost officially dead.

I agree that technological advancement is necessary and a reasonable pace is a good thing. However, some aspects of web development can become tedious and, time consuming when it becomes near impossible to even log into the administration section of a website without first needing to running through the update and back up procedures or even turn or the computer in the morning without having to restart it due to required updates!

How is a professional web developer supposed to keep up to date when there is barely enough hours in the day to read about the emerging technology, let alone take the time to learn the peculiarities of a particular and intricacies of a brand new system emerging.

Social

Well this aspect has surprisingly not taken many strong turns this year, twitter is still the fastest and easiest way to share small fast updates about what is happening around you and Facebook is still the social hub of the inter-webs.

Not really surprising but a big update on the social scene is the emergence of a big corporation “like” war, they have invaded on the Facebook and Twitter fronts and are now engaged in a war of followers, likes and how much they can essentially spam the poor soul who clicks the like button!

Political

Dare I enter my political views online for fear of being penalized in the face of the disturbing new laws that the powers that be are trying to get passed in the US? Yes, I am talking about the SOPA bill. I won’t go into detail here but how ridiculous to think that these laws will do anything to stop piracy and not punish those who don’t have billion dollar law suit budgets.

Although I don’t live in the US I believe that t shouldn’t matter where I live, I should have the right to say what I want, where I want without fear of reprisal from the powers that be.

Wrap up

A lot has changed this year, and it’s tough to stay up to date, But Tiger Strike Media has a lot of exciting things in the works for 2012. Let us know in the comments what you would like to see happen Technologically, Socially, or Politically by this time in 2013.

Overview

Many changes are in the works with around 150 tickets set to be resolved for WordPress 3.3 In the WordPress trac. Most of the tickets are maintenance / optimization and cleanup Tickets with a few little sweeteners thrown in for god measure.

Plupload

Plupload is pretty much the major ui sweetener in the works for WordPress 3.3 and will completely replace the current media uploader that WordPress uses.

It is a multi platform media uploader and basic management script which can use HTML5, Google gears, Silverlight, Flash, Browserplus or just normal forms! It will mean that the WordPress uploader that is currently in place will become a whole lot more flexible, ditching the flash based uploader currently used in WordPress for a much more robust script capable of pausing / resuming uploads if something fails and providing progress bar support for more than just flash users.

Welcome Screen

This is a generic “Welcome To WordPress” screen which will display only when a user has a) Installed wordpress for the first time, or b) A core upgrade has taken place.

This will be able to give users a little more information about the state of the server that WordPress is sitting on, Some information about what has changed and what WordPress can do for you. This ticket is far from finalised, so details are sketchy, but will not be trying to shove too much information back at the user, but simply to say “Here is what we have, Here is what you have, Now enjoy yourself.”

Behind The Scenes

Under the surface is where the most work will happen in WordPress 3.3, with improvements to the metadata and settings API’s will make writing advanced themes and plugins a little easier, IE7 will be deprecated meaning that the CSS will be able to be a bit leaner, permalinks that consist entirely of /%postname%/ will no longer be a performance hindrance on large sites, Menus may use fly-outs ( sideways Dropdowns ) instead of the click to open different options, these are just the beginning. With around 150 items addressed, features added and bugs squished, it is sure to be another solid release for wordpress.

What Is HTML5?

HTML5 is the latest round of HTML standards to be released by the W3C ( The organisation responsible for trying to keep wen development sane ).

It has a Tonne Of New stuff, generally making web development and maintenance easier , A site using HTML5 will be ( if not officially supported by the search engines yet ) faster and more efficient for a search engine to crawl meaning  a happy googlebot and in theory better saerch engine rankings. Although this will depend on not misleading or spamming the search engines which we all know they just Love.

Elements

HTML5 includes a plethora of new elements below are the biggies:

• Header – An element specifically for the top section of a website
• Hgroup – designed to hold the logo and link back to the home page etc in the header
• Nav – An element to point out the navigation around the site.
• Footer – Specifically for the bottom of a webpage
• Section – An arbitrary section of the page
• Article – Essentially the content of the page
• Video – A Self Hosted video ( at this stage, Youtube is not supported, but they do output a html5 player in an iframe )
• Audio – For those into some music on a webpage
• Canvas – A tag with some veryspecial properties, this enable dynamic animation and drawing using javascript. it is compatible on Mobile devices and can do almost anything that flash can do!

Browser Compatability

As with any new emerging technology and standards, this is the kicker for HTML5, Cross browser compatability, or more to the point, Does it work in Internet Explorer?

The short answer is no, HTML5 won’t work natively in IE less than 9, but there is good news, there is 2 ways around this problem.

1) Javascript – A small section of javascript will enable the use of these elements in Internet Explorer, but the site is reliant on javascript in those browsers.

2) Chrome Frame – This is a plugin for Internet Explorerto enable HTML5 and CSS3 as well as a fast JavaScript engine but this relies on the user installing a plugin and Javasacript.

The web is moving on, whether people update their browsers or not. Developing for browsers which are past their use by date is very difficult and time consuming.

HTML5 is something that I like to use extensively on every project and if that means that people who will not upgrade their browsers or at least enable javascript then they are doomed from the start.

We don’t recommend using hundreds of plugins to do useless things with your wordpress installation, as this inevitably leads to wordpress bloat, too many scripts loaded, external stylesheets, much much more code for the PHP engine to sift through before anything is output to the browser.

We recommend a small handful of actively maintained, well written and documented extensively used plugins to add a power punch to your wordpress site.

1. Headspace 2

What is a high quality wordpress installation without a slick, and powerful SEO management plugin.

This Plugin has it all:

Configure Meta Data Individually for:

• Posts
• Pages
• Categories
• Home page
• Author pages
• Search pages
• 404 page

You can define:

• Tags/keywords, with suggested keywords
• Descriptions
• Page titles
• Custom ‘more text’
• Site name and site description
• Custom themes – change your theme on each page!
• Custom plugins – load a plugin only on specific pages
• Additional CSS and JavaScript files
• Noindex and nofollow meta tags
• Follow/follow on archive, category, page, tag, and comment links

It also allows you to add:

• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster
• Google section targeting
• Mint statistic
• 103bees
• Statcounter
• CrazyEgg heat map
• Feedburner Stats Pro
• Apture
• Yahoo! Site Explorer
• Microsoft Live Verification
• HitTail
• Piwik tracking
• AWStats tracking

As well as this more than impressive list of features, it just looks good. You can drag and drop fields to appear on the write post/page page, You can even import data from many of the other popular SEO plugins!

2. Google XML Sitemap

This powerful wordpress plugin will generate a google compliant XML sitemap and give you the option to alert google, yahoo, and bing whenever you update your content an absolute MUST have for SEO.

3. ShareThis

This plugin is the holy grail of social media bookmarking plugins. with 45 built-in social services, 7 styles of button ranging from Large or small Buttons, Counters, Classic hover popup, you name it, this plugin can do it!

You can add or remove supported services, even tracking and analytics if you register on the sharethis website.

4. Google Analytics For WordPress

Juicy analytics. If you need to know what your visitors are doing on your site, where they come from, where they go and what they did, Google analytics is simply unbeatable.

Just signup for an analytics account, grab your ID number and you are good to go.

5. w3 Total Cache

Why should your users wait while your server digs through the database and generates the HTML page to serve out?

This plugin, apart from having TONNES of options, will essentially generate a static HTML page to serve your website visitors. As well as having the options to enable GZIP compression of your content this will make a sluggish blog run fast and smooth.

The options page can be a nightmare to navigate if you don’t really know what you are looking at, but once it is correctly configured, it will significantly reduce page load times, server load and that reduces your bounce rate from digg!

6. WP-DB Manager

This great little wordpress plugin is great for backing up your website. It has many functions such as managing, optimising, repairing database tables without having to access PHPmyadmin as well as having the ability to email out a copy of the entire Wp database at a set interval.

7. Wp-PageNavi

Simple, easy to manage and a great array of options, Page navigation is great for SEO, Usability and being able to find that old post that you wanted to edit.

8. Gravity Forms

As much as I wanted to keep this list to the free plugins, if you are going to be dealing with complex data, large multi part forms, etc etc, you are going to need this plugin, it is well worth the investment over the free ones that are full of bugs, poor code and poor management options.

9. Shopp

Again, not a freebie, but the poor code or ultra basic feature sets of the free e-commerce plugins are a joke. If you value your Hair, Sanity, Time and having a properly working website at the end of it, you just cant pass up this beautifully well written e-commerce plugin.

10. Capability Manager

One of the major shortcomings in a default wordpress install is a solid capability manager, this plugin more than makes up for that.

Easy to use, add roles or capabilities, change / modify / delete existing roles, add capabilities, this plugin makes user role / capability management an absolute breeze.

Wrap Up

These plugins will supercharge your wordpress installation into a powerful, SEO optimised , Social networking, CMS system. Far and away from the basic wordpress installation.

Remember never use more plugins than you have to and always keep them updated along with your wordpress file.

The Biggest things in this release are a global admin bar, ajaxified admin screens and post formats.

Post Formats

These are simply additional meta information attached to each post. These will mean that displaying each post in a list, say the home page of a blog style site , the archives list page or the Blog page just to pick a few possible examples will be a very simple process. As simple as a single line of code to differentiate between a “video” , “Gallery” , or short facebook/twitter style this means that to achieve this functionality will mean no more using categories or custom post meta for unnesessary purposes.

Global Admin Bar

If you have used the wordpress.com service you will have noticed that at the top of the page is a grey navigation bar allowing you to move around to the edit post page, dashboard etc these options will change depending on the user level.

For example:

A User Logged in as the site administrator  might see the following link structure as a dropdown menu.

• Admin
  • Edit Profile
  • Dashboard
  • Logout
• Add New
  • Post
  • Page
  • Any Custom Post Types
• Comments
• Appearance
  • Widgets
  • Menus

Where A Subscriber might see something more like this:

• Admin
  • Edit Profile
  • Dashboard
  • Logout

All They could do on the dashboard is edit their profile anyway.

Admin Ajax

This makes administering the site a little faster and a little simpler.

It means that sorting, searching or navigating pages, posts, plugins, themes etc will all be easier, faster and less draining on your host as wordpress is not loading the entire page to sort through the list of posts.

Neat little upgrade and entirely on the administration side of things.

Wrap-Up

Apart from these major updates, there has been a myriad of minor updates inluding admin CSS cleanup, database querying, updating the included version of jQuery to the latest version, updates to TinyMCE (The WYSIWG editor on posts and pages) and much more. Full Details can be seen on the wordpress codex.

It certainly is a step forward for wordpress for usability, reliability and speed.