<div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/happy-15th-birthday-drupal' title='photo credit: A30_Tsitika – cc Drupal, the open source CMS founded by Dries Buytaert on December 29th, 2000, is 15 years old. Drupal version 1.0.0 was released on January 15th, 2001, “The early decisions to open-source Drupal and use the GPL license set the cornerstone principles for how our community shares with one another and builds upon each other’s achievements to this day,” Buytaert said. You might be wondering why a site devoted to WordPress is publishing a story about a competing CMS’ birthday. The fact is, Drupal, Joomla and WordPress are more complimentary than they are competitors. Each is open source, licensed under the GPL, and is composed of code submitted by thousands of volunteers located across the world. All three projects make up a combined total of 37 years of experience.  Drupal – 15 Years Old WordPress – 12 Years Old Joomla – 10 Years Old  When Buytaert founded Drupal, many of the social networking services and browsers we enjoy today didn’t exist: Chrome, Firefox, and Safari didn’t exist yet; most people used Netscape, Opera or Internet Explorer. New ideas for sharing and exchanging content such as ‘public diaries’ and RSS had yet to gain widespread acceptance and Drupal was among the first to support those. Wikipedia was launched on the same day as Drupal and sparked the rise of user-generated content. Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist until 4-5 years later He describes many of the things Drupal got right like hooks and modules. There are some things the project got wrong such as adding support for OpenID which never gained widespread adoption. Near the end of his post, Buytaert reaffirms his commitment through the Drupal project to protect the privacy, serendipity and freedom of the web we enjoy, “As the web evolves from a luxury to a basic human right, it’s important that we treat it that way. To increase our impact, we have to continue to make Drupal easier to use. I’d love to help build a world where people’s privacy is safe and Drupal is more approachable.” At the State of the Word at WordCamp US last year, Matt Mullenweg announced a similar role for WordPress. At the 46:58 mark, Mullenweg discusses WordPress’ APIs being the key to an open web.  At a time when web services are restricting their APIs to third-party developers, WordPress which is used across 25% of the web with open APIs can help reverse the trend, “I think that we can use this opening up, especially switching to API driven development to open up more of the web. When you think about what open source looks like, when the code being available isn’t the most important thing, when we’re interacting across multiple devices, the APIs become just as important as the code itself being open,” Mullenweg said. Last but not least, check out this interview where Mullenweg and Buytaert share the same stage in 2011 at an event called Schipulcon. In the interview, the duo discuss open source software and their experience managing open source projects. One of the key takeaways from the interview is Buytaert’s response when asked, how WordPress’ existence benefits Drupal, “If WordPress wins, Drupal wins, because it means open source wins.”  Like Joomla and WordPress, Drupal is a champion of open source. Its existence and continued success should be celebrated. I hope you’ll join us by wishing the Drupal project a happy birthday! '>WPTavern: Happy 15th Birthday Drupal</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/easily-display-highlights-of-a-story-with-the-story-lines-plugin' title='If you’re looking for an easy way to display highlights of a story inside of posts, check out a new plugin called Story Lines, developed by Jacob Martella. Story Lines adds a meta box to the Posts screen where users can name the highlights box, configure its width, how it’s displayed, and fields for three highlights with an option to add more. Story Lines Meta Box To display highlights in a post, click the SL button in the visual editor which adds a shortcode to the post. Story Lines Shortcode Here’s what Story Lines looks like on the frontend of the Tavern test site. The colors are bold and grab the reader’s attention. Story Lines Output Story Lines doesn’t have a settings panel to configure its design, “That’s one of the things I’m still learning about this whole process, is to give people complete control of how it looks. I hope to have something like that for the next version,” Martella told the Tavern. If you want to change the design of Story Lines, Martella suggests editing the story-lines, .story-lines, and .title classes with the caveat that you may have to use the !important declaration. You should save these changes to a child theme so they’re not lost when you update the plugin. The list items use the same font as the active theme. Martella has a background in journalism and is the sports editor for The Daily Texan. While journalism is his first passion, he’s slowly transitioning to the web development world by creating themes and plugins for WordPress: I’ve been trying to figure out a niche for myself in the WordPress development world and I’m starting to think it might be creating themes and plugins that replicate what people see on the New York Times or other top newspaper websites for others to use on their sites. My first plugin, JM Breaking News, and the Giornalismo theme I created are also examples of that. So really, I’m just trying to explore the niche where web development and journalism collide and WordPress is the tool I’m using to do just that. There are two features I’d like to see added in a future release. The first, is the ability to rearrange highlights with a drag-and-drop interface. The second, is a way to add a URL which links to an anchor point in the article so readers can visit specific parts of a story. I tested Story Lines on WordPress 4.5 alpha and it works as expected. It’s available for free from the WordPress plugin directory. '>WPTavern: Easily Display Highlights of a Story With the Story Lines Plugin</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/new-upvato-service-offers-free-backups-for-envato-market-products' title='If you’ve ever purchased files from Envato, chances are that you have them backed up locally or sent to a cloud storage service like Dropbox. Upvato is a new alternative that specializes in Envato Market files. The free service allows Envato customers to back up their purchased files. Upvato takes a complete backup of the screenshots, descriptions, titles, and author information. In the event that an item is removed from Envato, customers who have uploaded their files to Upvato have a complete backup. Freddy Lundekvam, owner of Norway-based Logik Web Studios, said that he was inspired to create Upvato after losing purchased files due to the fact that Envato “does not guarantee ongoing availability of items after the initial download.” “I’m a heavy user of Themeforest,” Lundekvam said. “I’m a full time programmer who doesn’t know much about design, and I’m especially a huge fan of the admin templates and own 15+ of them. In total, amongst all the marketplaces I’ve bought quite a few items. Having purchased many files, I quickly learned about Envato’s right to take down and remove any file at their or the author’s sole discretion without any warning. I personally have lost 10 files because of this policy, and I find it quite annoying to lose files.” Lundekvam used to back up his files to Dropbox but found it frustrating to sort through his library without much information and no way to look them up after they disappeared from Envato. He teamed up with a colleague who is a designer and created Upvato as a solution to this problem. In addition to storing the file you purchased, Upvato also stores the screenshots, file descriptions, comments, and includes versioning – allowing you access to any version that has been uploaded.  Users can back up an unlimited number of files and there’s no limit on the file size. Upvato creators are also committed to keeping the service free, according to the statement on their website: Upvato is and will always fee a completely free service. We strongly believe that this is something that should be a part of Envato from day one and don’t agree with their policies. The service uses the Envato API to allow users to back up all of their files automatically. Files can also be uploaded manually into your Upvato account. Envato’s Response to the New Upvato Backup Service While Envato does not officially endorse Upvato, the company encourages users to find a backup solution. Venessa Paech, Envato PR Manager, gave WP Tavern the following statement: Envato buyers use a variety of methods for managing their purchases. Whatever service they use, whether Dropbox or a service like Upvato, we always encourage people to back up their digital assets.  Envato Market is an active marketplace with thousands of sellers and millions of items. While we offer a downloads section on every account, our focus is less on post-purchase asset management, and more on discovering and purchasing wonderful digital goods that solve creative challenges. Essentially, after the purchase has been made, Envato doesn’t find any conflict in users choosing Upvato as a backup solution. The company is unlikely to change its policy about not guaranteeing files indefinitely, as it needs to account for all kinds of circumstances including copyright complaints and technical problems. Upvato’s free backup solution may reduce the number of Envato customers who are negatively impacted when files are removed without notice. “Storage Space is Cheap” and Upvato Doesn’t Plan to Monetize I asked Lundekvam how he’s funding the enormous amount of space required to store files for Envato customers. “Storage space is cheap these days – hosting 10 TB of data in an Amazon Glacier is merely $7 a month,” he said. “But I also take benefit from the automated uploads. “If you connect your Envato account and back up the item, then only one file for that item will be used for all users who have the same file (Verified purchased with Envato). Every time you try to download a backup of the file from Envato, we check if the exact same file already exists amongst the items available files. If it does, it’s not stored. Instead, you use the same file that already exist in the system,” Lundekvam said. Despite having created a service that solves a real problem for potentially thousands of customers, Lundekvam said he’s not seeking a revenue model to fund his efforts. For now, the site exists to solve a problem he encountered that also affects many other Envato customers. Monetization isn’t a priority for him at this time. “Currently that’s not the plan,” he said. “Running such a site isn’t all that expensive. For now, we just wanted to make something cool and useful that people might want and need.” '>WPTavern: New Upvato Service Offers Free Backups for Envato Market Products</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/human-made-publishes-free-wordpress-rest-api-whitepaper' title=' Today Human Made released its new WordPress REST API Whitepaper, an in-depth guide to how the API is changing the way developers interact with WordPress. The publication was written for a diverse audience, including developers, agencies, project managers, and publishers. It includes a technical breakdown of how the REST API works, along with an overview of the benefits and challenges for teams that take on API-driven projects. The whitepaper is called “Talking to 25% of the Web,” but the title may soon need to be updated as WordPress usage in mid-January is 25.7% and is forecasted to climb past 26% in Q1. It is a collaborative publication authored by the team at Human Made, which includes several lead contributors on the WP REST API team. The overview for the whitepaper summarizes the different topics you’ll find within the content:  Introduces you to the headless CMS Introduces you to REST Provides a technical overview of the WordPress REST API Explores some of the benefits of using the REST API in your project Talks about some of the ways that the REST API will change WordPress development Discusses some of the challenges that you may encounter in your REST API project  The 44-page guide also includes case studies of companies already using the WP REST API and a list of important resources. “Talking to 25% of the Web” is an excellent free resource that should be required reading for anyone using WordPress, especially those who are building for the platform, consulting, creating SaaS products, or otherwise deriving their income from the software. Human Made employs a large contingent of WP REST API team members and subsidizes much of their work on the project. The agency is heavily investing in the future of WordPress and is leading the way in helping developers learn how to build with the REST API. If you want to further your skills in this area, Human Made is also organizing an educational event called A Day of REST, which will be held on January 28, 2016. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from the developers who are building the API as well as those who are already using it in production. '>WPTavern: Human Made Publishes Free WordPress REST API Whitepaper</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/buddypress-rest-api-feature-plugin-now-in-development' title=' Developers interested in contributing to the creation of a BuddyPress REST API met for the first time yesterday to discuss a path forward. Bronson Quick is leading the project with the help of Ryan Fugate. Quick works for Human Made and is a WordPress core contributor. He is also the lead contributor on Chassis, a lightweight WP Vagrant install that uses Puppet for provisioning. John James Jacoby set up a GitHub repository where development for the BP REST API will take place. In summarizing the meeting’s discussion regarding planning and architecture, Quick said, “Planning how we tackle this is very important rather than diving straight into the code. As we’re ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ we can use the lessons learned from the WP REST API project and put in time at the start to plan this properly. “It makes sense to plan out the data we would like returned from endpoints and how they relate to each other with _links. For example, if we’re displaying the data for the activities endpoint rather than showing a user_id we should link this to a user endpoint.” The team will be taking a “schema first” approach and plans to adhere to Test Driven Development – planning an endpoint, writing tests that fail then writing the code for the endpoint until the tests pass. “This is something that’s often talked about as being an ideal development methodology but it’s rarely practiced in the WordPress space,” Quick said. “Tackling a project this way should mean less bugs although I do realize this could be a blocker for new contributors.” The BP REST API team plans to tackle read-only endpoints first for the activity stream and xprofile components via the _links method Quick outlined. Ryan Fugate opened a GitHub issue regarding the plugin’s folder structure/loader, and the plan is to design it as a feature plugin that will one day land in BuddyPress core. What is the Purpose of a BP REST API? During the meeting contributors discussed the primary problems that a BP REST API should solve, which Quick summarized in the meeting notes. The team agreed that the main purpose for building the API is to expose BuddyPress data in a RESTful way so that developers and site owners can use it to create plugins, mobile apps, or anything else they want. “The other main purpose for the BP REST API is that we can use the endpoints going forward to alter some things internally in BuddyPress, as in the past ‘the functions throughout BuddyPress are very purpose built to solve one specific theme-side problem,&#039;” Quick said. If you want to get involved in building a REST API for BuddyPress make sure to follow the project on GitHub and jump into the discussion happening in the #buddypress Slack channel. '>WPTavern: BuddyPress REST API Feature Plugin Now in Development</a></li></ul></div>