GitHub for Journalism — What WordPress Post Forking could do to Editorial Workflows, by Ben Balter. Ben was a 2011 Google Summer of Code student, where he wrote a really great WordPress plugin called Document Revisions. Now, he’s set his sights on post revisions, forking, and merging. If he goes through with it, it could be a game-changing project.
Links
Donate $100 to Jitterbug and I’ll review your plugin
Jitterbug Bakery: Eat. Drink. Blog. As I work full time on the WordPress project, I don’t do consulting. But! If you donate $100 to Jane’s Jitterbug Kickstarter project, I’ll do a code review and security audit your WordPress.org-hosted plugin. You’ll get a few hours of my time — quite the bang for your buck. Limited time offer. 🙂 Other awesome people, including Pete Mall, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, Aaron Campbell, and Ptah Dunbar, are also fair game.
Stop SOPA
WordPress takes a stand: Help Stop SOPA, PIPA.
Theme Foundry: “Don’t Steal My Theme Options”
Don’t steal my Theme Options, from The Theme Foundry. It seems at least few people interpreted my post last week as suggesting there should be no options. While I think that software should just work, I also suggested that a half-dozen options could be removed from WordPress, not the other 50-something options. Nonetheless, the Theme Foundry post is a great case study in how you should be approaching options — in a careful, meticulous fashion. “We talked it over, and decided we’d go one-by-one through the options and scrutinize like madmen.” That quote makes me want to go find and don my Theme Foundry t-shirt.
“College Newspapers: Still Teaching Obsolescence”
College Newspapers: Still Teaching Obsolescence. “Why the hell are college newspapers still being printed on paper?” Aaron Hockley asks. In the comments, I suggest that while some journalism programs are behind the times, others are excelling, and that hyperlocal news backed by local deals and advertising keeps print revenues up and makes it worthwhile for college newspapers. (In case you don’t know my background, I was the online director at an award-winning college paper for three years.)
Via Andrew Spittle.