A lot has been going on this week, despite it being short because of the holidays.
First, around the beginning of the week we participated in the 2-day WordPress bug hunt which tracked down and cleaned up dozens and dozens of bugs. All of these fixes were made available on WordPress.com shortly thereafter. Some you might notice are fixes for the anonymous pingback bug and the widgets pallete. Also when I write an entry here, it no longer says it’s from “Super Admin”. Not that I minded the title, but most people just call me Matt.
Speaking of widgets, you may have noticed the new layout we’ve been playing around with lately. This had some bugs at first, but they’re being worked out and the new layout should allow for us to incorporate more widgets without things getting too crowded.
Behind the scenes, there was quite a bit of work on internationalization, as we prepare for both themes and the admin to be available in different languages. We also found a bug with signups where are the language choices you made during signup weren’t being saved. You may have also noticed that the top posts and blogs on you dashboard will be from blogs in the language you chose on your General Options page. Language stuff can be very tricky, but we really want to give a cool experience for our many international users for whom English is not their preferred language.
When you comment here on the main WordPress.com blog, you shouldn’t get security certificate warnings anymore. Due to the weird way SSL certificates work, you actually need a separate one for *.wordpress.com and wordpress.com, and we had to change the way we balance some traffic. Making the forum logins secure is still on its way, but not quite ready yet. (However we’ve made a lot of changes to the underlying bbPress forum software lately to help things along.)
You guys got an average of about 900,000 public pageviews a day last week.
There were some spruce-ups around WordPress.com, like aforementioned new tag pages and a new contact form for support if you’re having trouble logging in.
Finally, tonight I put in a new theme called “Light” which is pretty clean and has a nice page navigation system.
WordPress.com News 
i love new themes day, but this, i feel, does not really add much variety to the available templates because it’s just another clean theme. there’s just too many ‘clean’ themes for my liking (white as milk, treba, supposedly clean, simpla, rubric comes to mind), what we need is something with more character, and of course customising ability. or better yet, updating some of the themes already available, like the fauna theme which i believe many would choose if it weren’t for its lack of widgets and customisation.
that said, i must give the wp team credit for constantly improving this free service and giving a personalised touch in feedback or forums. i like that a lot.
Thanks guys for fixing the bug with Greek characters in the rich editor. Editing the html source code of posts is much more easier now.
What was the point of the new layout for the widgets page?
We need more three-column themes like Andreas09 1.5. I don’t know why theme developers don’t understand the need for weblogs with a lot of links on their sidebars to distribute those links into two colums on boths sides in order to prevent some links form being burried deep into the blog. As far as I know, Andreas09 1.5 is the only WordPress theme with three columns. We need more in order to have a greater variety.
And by the way, the changes are nice. We know WP is on the track of a dramatic evolution. Thank you for working hard for us.
I second that, MyScribbles, more three column themes are needed, and one that will allow header customization please! I think the other Andreas theme is a three column, just that it has two on the same side?
Thanks for your work guys… I always get really excited about new things that you roll out!
V
It is allways pleasing to read here an account of all work being done. And we have alse here a very nice contact template for the support that might become available for a contact page in WordPress, don’t we ?
Hoping to have it available in a near future…
How about encouraging some of the designers to provide alternative color schemes for their themes? There are designs that I really like, but with horrible colors. Colors are subjective of course, but all the more reason to provide choices.
oh nice. I always love new additions to the Themes. Its always a pleasure to see all the work you guys put in. Really makes our lives that much easier!
Im with livingjourney….it is always nice and exciting when something new rolls out! Keep em coming!
Fantastic work! I’m thrilled with most of the bug fixes, but hopefully the Publish Bug and Future Posts Bug, especially the latter, will be fixed REALLY SOON.
Keep up the tremendous job you are doing. I’m totally amazed at how this has grown and expanded. Be proud.
awesome awesome awesome. i’m glad the bug hunt went well, with it being the fourth and all. it was pretty dead for all 5 minutes that i was able to spend on it.
Great work everyone!
I do agree with Mr.Scribbles too. We could really use a three column theme with customization option for the header. I too, have too many links and other things to be putting them in one sidebar. Right now I use Andreas09. It would be nice if I could customize the header at least.
The ability to use javascript for things like polls would be a blessing!
Thanks for all your hard work and dedication.:D
have a great day!
Another thank you for the “behind the scenes” work you guys do that makes our blogging experience here so pleasurable. I, for one, really like the new theme, “Light”. Perhaps those that are requesting something different could name a theme specifically or link to one they would like. I know early on I asked for a certain theme by name and it was made available proving that the powers that be do listen to our suggestions.
Forget my precedent post. The problem occured on a non posted entry. It cannot occur on a posted entry, since every tag is registered.
Greetings Matt,
Kudos for the work. More kudos for the communication of the work done. it’s always good to keep users in the loop.
This morning I used the Regulus reset button and changed my theme from Regulus to “Light”. I ran into two problems and I sent in a feedback on them.
(1) The strange big black box at the end of my last text widget that suddenly appeared in my sidebar that I can’t remove myself.
(2) The calendar that does not have the capacity to display titles of blog articles when the mouse hovers over them. It also does not highlight the dates when blog entries are made. I think these features are important enough to ask for them to be included on all themes.
(3) Light is a nice clean theme but once again it’s a masculine theme featuring black, very pale blue and acid green. We have an abundance of “clean” themes and among them only “Neat” allows customization of the header.
(4) It would be nice if there was some recognition that more feminine themes are required and by that I don’t mean ones with hearts and flowers. Themes with cool or cold colours like black, grey, blue and green tend to have a masculine “feel” to them. Themes with warmer colours like brown, rose, rust, gold and cream have a feminine “feel” to them. Colour affects all of us in a myriad of ways and welcoming readers to ones blog can be assisted by having a “warm” coloured theme.
(5) The bottom line for me on themes is functionality. Who cares if the skin look great when there are no widgets? As you well know [she said with a grin] widgets are a unique innovation that increase functionality and set WordPress apart from those other places. IMO it’s more imporatnt to ensure all wordpress.com themes are “widgetized” than to introduce new themes.
(6) Why are there no themes with widgets in the footers? There is a demand for them and they would be well received.
(7) And why oh why is there another wordpress theme competition being held when the wounds from the last one have yet to heal and the prizes have yet to be distributed to the winners? I wrote about this in my blog http://coyotes.wordpress.com/2006/07/07/customizing-templates-wheres-the-functionality/
I’ve noted that every time you make an entry here a legion of enthusiastic “yes” men and women write you a couple of lines of applause. Being human it’s no doubt wonderful to hear these accoldaes and believe me when I say that I’m a happy camper too. However, I’ve noted that very few bloggers actually take the time to offer any constructive criticism on theme development and offer any “meat” in their feedback to you, meat that goes benath the appearance of “skins”. Well, I’m not afraid of being barbecued Matt. You have an outstanding intellect so I’m expecting that you will give my feedback serious consideration, and I’m thanking you, in advance, for doing so.Worpress is the best blogging platform I’ve ever used. Let’s make it even better.
All my best,
tt
Ref: The new theme “Light”
I changed today from “Simpla” to “Light”. I really like it. It’s great.
But there are some minor flows´in the sidebar:
Widget-titles are not always shown properly – e.g. the blogroll title has a bullet now. And some other widget-titles are misaligned resp. some with indent and some without …
Btw, I propose sidebar content should always have smaller text letter size.
Cool. You fixed it? Now everything is in line and order … 😉
Wonderful work Matt and all.
A bit OT but regarding the addition of the Light theme. I too would love to see more variable width themes, more three column themes and ideally variable width, three columns themes with customizable headers. Something like Andreas 04/09 but with a customizable header. It’d also be super cool if we could find a way to adjust the height of the custom headers to suit ourselves… just wishing…
Finally, I haven’t noticed the changes to the widgets, I’m sure the changes are fabulous, but perhaps you could elaborate on what’s different?
Thanks Matt. You are the man! The more themes, the merrier right?
Could we please have the Kubrick theme allow custom headers? Currently I’m using Neat, which looks good, but I still like Kubrick the best, Now that Neat allows custom headers, I want to stick with a theme which allows this. However, I would love to have my beautiful custom header on Kubrick.
If you were to look at my beautiful header on my blog, you will notice that the colors match Kubrick even better than they do with Neat.
So can we please have the Kubrick theme allow custom headers? Pretty please?
Also, since Hemingway is so nice too, how about some improvements to this, including more widgets, and xhtml validation?
Matt, you are cool, so I’m sure you’ll oblige!
By the way, thanks for all of the hard work that you’ve been putting into this. We all love you for it.
Be good!
For as long as WP.COM is FREE, I’d say BRAVO to MATT and his team for keeping us all well informed.
Afterall, the best things in life are free.
Timethief: “(7) And why oh why is there another wordpress theme competition being held …. and the prizes have yet to be distributed to the winners?”
Matt has no control if someone wants to start a theme comp.
And I offered a prize myself and a prize through my other work – we were not advised who won so we could not send prizes. Not our fault. Not the designers fault. As it is, I have every confidence in Undersigned (Thomas) to deliver an excellent comp. (And the prize I did not get the chance to give has been tripled by me and Undersigned knows).
The black box is fixed.
Thank you for your work, and for the new theme!
Yes Timethief, as the comment boxs says, “Please do not use these comments for support or bug reporting.” As for widgets in themes or additional functionality, we’re always trying to increase the functionality of our existing themes. Widgets are popular, but I haven’t heard much demand for footer widgets.
Thanks alot guys for working your asses off for us.. and still we’re using your amazing free services, you guys are great.
I love the Light theme. In fact, I think it’s one of the better ‘lights’ around now. It has some solidness to it and yet it’s, well, light… How simply wonderful!
I love the internationalization improvements (specially the dashboard thing) 🙂
I would like widgets rolled out to the Hemingway Theme. That would be great. I have asked for Matt and the guys to roll out another similar Hemingway theme called Japanese Cherry Blossom, hopefully they will consider this.
I love using wordpress, and I find that the forum is the best place to get wonderful help and ideas, so hats off to all here at WordPress!!!
V
I really dig the new theme and tag pages.
Personally, I love the new “Light” theme, and am using it now. Obviously more customization is desired, but wordpress.com is free, so what I have to work with is just fine and dandy for now. Thanks for all your hard work!
There is still a problem with the é in french but it’s not as bad it could be. Thanks
Please don’t make the forum logins secure! It’s bad enough having to login to my blog afresh every time I want to post, without doing the same to the forums.
@ bothack: I agree that the new layout of the Widgets page is worse because you have to scroll down to save the changes you made. It was much easier with the old layout.
@ Myscribbles: Yea, we need some more 3-column themes. Especially for people like me because I post ‘Poems’ on my blog and the 2-column ones don’t look good with poems in it.
Thanks alot Matt for keeping us updated.
Kudos
I would love to see China Red as A new theme I really like it . PLease Please. Please
I agree with dorknation,
Header customization is a Must along with three column themes!
Cheers and Thank you WP for the BEST service 🙂