Deadlines are not arbitrary, they’re a promise we make to ourselves and our users that helps us rein in the endless possibilities of things that could be a part of every release. We aspire to release three major versions a year because through trial and error we’ve found that to be a good balance between getting cool stuff in each release and not so much that we end up breaking more than we add.

Good deadlines almost always make you trim something from a release. This is not a bad thing, it’s what they’re supposed to do.

The route of delaying a release for that one-more-feature is, literally, a rabbit hole. We did that for over a year once, and it wasn’t pleasant for anybody.

The more frequent and regular releases are, the less important it is for any particular feature to be in this release. If it doesn’t make it for this one, it’ll just be a few months before the next one. When releases become unpredictable or few and far between, there’s more pressure to try and squeeze in that one more thing because it’s going to be so long before the next one. Delay begets delay.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

— Steve Jobs

…and the winner is…JSON!

According to the Twitter and WordPress developers this is the response regarding the XML Vs JSON ‘match’.

After the announcement that the Twitter v1.1 API will only support JSON as the response format, I read today that one of ideas for the WP GSoC2013 proposals is the rewriting of the importer/exporter plugins to use JSON instead of XML for a ‘for a leaner, less error-prone experience‘.

Running WordPress 3.6 beta

As a lover of tumblogs, of the new features that will be introduced in the next major release of WordPress, Post Formats is one of my favorites. Although  post formats were already previously shipped, with the upcoming 3.6 version there is a full UI in the post editor page and their usage has been normalized, with an API to retrieve the relative structured informations ‘attached’ to the post.

I wanted to try them on the road right now, so I decided to upgrade the WP installation
running behind this site to the available beta. At first I tried with the Beta Tester plugin,
but after some trouble and to have more control I made the switch with the good ol’ git.

As it can be seen on the home, I’ve already published some posts with the link and quote formats and now I am working on the post formats API and the implementation (design/markup,…) of the various formats.

That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

— Steve Jobs

Twitter API changes and WordPress widgets

Twitter is going to change the way developers access their data with the next iteration of their API, the 1.1 version. This could cause some trouble to the Twitter plugins installed on a WordPress site.

For the Jetpack users, the latest releases introduce a new widget, Twitter Timeline, beside the old one. It is based on the widgets provided by Twitter, so you first will have to create a new one on your twitter account. Then just copy its id and paste it in the Jetpack widget configuration.

The old Jetpack widget won’t display tweets after API retirement.

Anyway, The deadline for the Twitter 1.0 API, initially set on May 7(tomorrow), was moved to June 11, so there is still some time left.

Where are the Women in WordPress?

Then there’s “imposter syndrome.” When women are complimented on their skills, many immediately think to themselves, “I’m not that great.” Most guys accept the compliment and believe it.

It was also noted at the summit discussion that many women don’t think they’re smart enough and feel like outsiders despite the incredible work they do, and some women who work in development tell people they’re not a developer.

My First Published Article

portfolio-customization-of-the-post-publication-date-in-the-twenty-eleven-wordpress-theme

This is an old article that Italian Web Design, an italian web design&development community, published some time ago.

It is about a customization of one of the default themes bundled with WordPress, the Twenty Eleven theme. More precisely, the article explains how I implemented the blog post date clip on an previous version of this site, respecting the ‘responsivity‘ of the Twenty Eleven theme:

old-site-shot

A WordPress Plugin for the ‘Orphaned’ Options

Say hello to mg-wp-delete-options, the last WordPress plugin I developed.

It enables a backend user to quickly access the ‘hidden’ WP options page(wp-admin/options.php) with a link on the admin bar and to easily delete with Ajax the unwanted option entries from the wp_option database table. So, it is a tool mainly targeted to developers and administrators.

It is available on my GitHub account.