October 1, 2008 Update: The survey is now closed. Thanks to all those who participated.
Another round of mini-mockups and multiple choice questions awaits the first 5000 respondents. WordPress 2.7 UI Survey #2 is now available to take your opinions regarding:

Where to put the search box
Where to put the Add New Post button/favorites menu
How to label [...]

I know that Matt Mullenweg and Matt Thomas die a little each time they see WordPress fan art that uses a faux logo. I only notice the chubby W because I’ve been edumacated.

MT (the real) has updated WordPress.org/about/buttons with official WordPress logos in pngs and vector image formats.

WordPress Logos and WordPress Buttons

There are also WordPress desktop wall paper in various official colors and sizes. The official WordPress colors are given in a variety of code systems. Pantone 7468 anyone?

Fan Art

The fan art page could use some fresh contributions.

These naturalized WordPress logos would be nice additions:

WordPress India Independence Logo by Allan Fernandes

One or more of the WordPress Malaysia Independence Logos by Avijit Paul. My favorite are the one’s with the flower for the O:

WordPress Malaysia Independence Logos by Avijit Paul

I love the WordCamp Philippines logo:

WordCamp Philippines Logo by Andrew Dela Serna

What is your favorite WordPress art?

Lorelle’s category icons are brilliant. For example, she uses this image for WordPress News:

Anyone know the creator of this popular images?

Same day correction: previously the article suggested the font is Dante, but both Matts have come to my rescue. It used to be the WordPress logo font. When Jason Santa Maria designed the new logo a few years ago, he chose the lovely Mrs. Eaves.

Adam Freetly identified the creator of the “lens flare” logo as being Dan Philibin.

WordPress “Lens Flare” Logo by Dan Philibin

My co-worker Noel Jackson, tired of hearing me whine about the Six Apart TypePad Trap, has created a WordPress importer mashing together the MT formatted export file (missing permalinks) and the broken TypePad AtomPub (missing comments and trackbacks). We are currently testing this on WordPress.com before polishing the code up and sharing it. We are looking for some TypePad customers to help us test it — it’s completely harmless, read-only.

If you are interested, let me know and we can set up a private blog on WordPress.com for you to import into. Bonus is that you will have a backup of your blog ready to go live if anything ever befalls TypePad.

This importer wouldn’t be possible without the heroic effort Ronald Heft Jr put into creating a TypePad AtomPub importer for WordPress — it’s not his fault TypePad still doesn’t have a way to export your full blog.

What’s an AtomPub? While working on this importer Noel contacted TypePad support only to have them tell him they don’t know what AtomPub is, and that they don’t support it.

Anyway, as I said, if you are a TypePad customer, and want to participate in open source development by testing this exporter, or would just like a backup of your blog ready to launch on WordPress.com, leave a comment or send me an email.

It’s about time everyone was let in on the progress we have made towards version 1.0 of bbPress.

I expect the next alpha release to be made sometime in the next two weeks. This release will include our first implementation of Pingbacks both to and from your bbPress installation. The first draft implementation of this is now in trunk.

Also to be included in the next release is an implementation of the pseudo cron feature from WordPress. This will allow plugin developers to schedule jobs in the future or on a regular basis. It is 100% compatible with the WordPress implementation, so the existing documentation is all you need to get started with using it.

To enable cron I’ve included the very new WP_Http class in BackPress. This new class is a robust HTTP fetcher which is meant to replace the Snoopy class in WordPress. This will allow all sorts of RESTFUL services to be utilised within bbPress plugins, like fetching data from other pages, embedding search APIs and even pulling data from WordPress via RSS or XML-RPC.

On the drawing board is the beginnings of an XML-RPC publishing interface. This will make it easier to use bbPress as a data store for more exotic clients like custom flash applications and XML-RPC desktop clients. It also opens the door to creating an iPhone app for bbPress much like the existing WordPress iPhone app.

An alpha version of bbPress’ new export/import format and tools has also landed in trunk thanks to our Google Summer of Code student Dan Larkin. You can read a little more about that at the BBXF website.

There will also be several fixes for bugs found by our courageous alpha testers.

Note: Survey is closed as of 9/18/08. Thanks for the feedback!
WordPress 2.7 is currently in development and as some people already know, it features a revised layout with a left-hand navigation column that was designed in response to user feedback regarding the use of screen real estate. Because the navigation came straight from the Crazyhorse [...]

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