We pumped out a bug fix and maintenance release this morning which aims to fix a couple of nagging issues facing some of our users. Considering the breadth with which WPtouch is installed and used, it’s no wonder there’s a couple issues.

Even if you’re not having any trouble you should update anyways, no harm done in doing so.

Issues covered in this release are:

• Fixed an undefined function error
• Stopped GigPress CSS from loading in the header when it’s not enabled
• Fixed error where Icon Upload would fail in admin
• Updated Ajax Upload script to v3.9

If you’re running WPtouch and want to show your desktop users that you have a mobile version ready for them why not use one of our spiffy decals? Simply grab the image you want below and link it to www.wptouch.com.
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Steve Jobs reveals the iPad

Apple announced the iPad today, and at first I have to say I was underwhelmed, though just hearing the chatter regarding the launch on Gizmodo, Twitter, Ars Technica and other tech news sites at the time.

This evening I took some time to watch the keynote video posted by Apple, reviewing the whole 1+ hour love-in of Apple’s ‘Latest Creation’. Afterwards I had a few new takeways and a few more positive thoughts about the device, its potential, and where BraveNewCode might fit in with its impact.

Though I still remain a little skeptical about the net worth of a device like this in my own life, I think for a good many others this might be something that really helps push computing to a new level in their lives, and brings great web content to that many more people.

Capabilities

It sure seemed to me that the full breadth of the device’s power and ‘Magic’ won’t be understood or known until it’s held in the hands, much like the iPhone for many people. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve handed my iPhone over to who, in just a few minutes start grasping what all the chatter is about. I think the same will hold true for this device, and over time as more 3rd party apps are built that harness its potential its wow factor will increase in multitudes.

mobile(BIG)Safari

Safari is touted as ‘the world’s best browser’ by Apple, and in testing for things like the Acid 3 test, it does indeed stack up as such. So what would the best browser in the world feel like on a large, crisp touch display? I’d have to think it’d be pretty nice, and the demos given by Jobs surely do give the impression that that’s the case.

So while it dwarfs the power of mobileSafari on the iPhone and really does put the power of the internet in your hands (minus, of course, Flash) I was left thinking about whether something like WPtouch would be at all desirable on a device like this.

WPtouch Possibilities

There are no doubt many who will think that the attention given to mobile website customizations and solutions (of which WPtouch belongs) do not or need not apply on a device such as this. I think they’re wrong, or at least, not thinking about it as creatively as they could.

Just as there’ll be revolutions for iPad apps created by iPhone app developers that are already making great apps for the iPhone and iPod touch (cough, Loren Brichter) I strongly think there’s a whole new breed of touch browsing customizations that can be brought to websites which not only enhance the the experience of browsing a website, but also improve upon it, taking advantage of the intuitive input method that is touch. A great example of this occurred during Phil Shiller’s demonstration during the keynote of the touch-specific gestures and capabilities built into Apple’s new iWork suite on the iPad. The way that a user is able to perform certain tasks on the iPad are far more intuitive, simple, powerful and fast when compared to the mouse/keyboard input paradigm.

There are of course things that are more difficult on a device like the iPad, or iPhone. In these cases thoughtful consideration about how to reduce or eliminate these barriers will enhance and improve a user’s experience of a website or web application, and minimize the barriers to e-commerce, great content, and so forth.

So with these ruminations in mind I think that BraveNewCode is ideally positioned to look at what these kinds of improvements and advantages might look and feel like. Because we love WordPress so much (just like you probably do, too) we think that adding unique and powerful support for this new breed of web browsing and publishing devices is a must for the active community of WordPress users who will likely be iPadding in the near future.

The Waiting Game

But for now, we’ll all just have to wait a few months before we can get our hands on one, or settle for dabbling with the latest SDK.

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg and Automattic announced the new WordPress Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to perpetuating WordPress and other open-source GPL projects.

In their own words:

The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is important to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base, that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come. As part of this mission, the Foundation will be responsible for protecting the WordPress, WordCamp, and related trademarks. A 501(c)3 non-profit organization, the WordPress Foundation will also pursue a charter to educate the public about WordPress and related open source software.

I think this is a really great endeavour, especially with regards to things like WordCamp which are starting to be taken advantage of by commercial organizations. I also think that as a non-profit they will attract many businesses that can donate to the WordPress Foundation while receiving a tax credit, which is really a win-win for both parties. I also applaud WordCamp New York for donating their budget surplus, over $28,000, to the WordPress Foundation.

For more information on the foundation, head on over to the WordPress Foundation website and browse around.

We were recently working on a client project that involved usage of the Shopp plugin for WordPress. Shopp is a fairly feature rich commercial plugin targeted towards users who want an easy way to sell products or digital downloads from their website.

While playing with it, it became apparent that the plugin didn’t support integration with any SEO plugins, such as the All-In-One SEO Pack. In fact, while scanning the support forums for Shopp, it seemed that other people were looking for this feature too.

So, BraveNewCode to the rescue. We whipped up a quick little proof of concept tonight to make it work using the WordPress shortcode API. To use it, simply add a shortcode into each Shopp product description, similar to this:


[shoppseo title="This is some title" desc="This is some description"]


The shortcode name is shoppseo, and the relevant parameters are title and desc.

To use the plugin, download the following file, copy it to your /wp-content/plugins folder and rename it to shopp-seo.php. At that point you should be able to activate it from the administration panel. You’ll also need the All-In-One SEO Pack installed and configured.

I imagine this feature will eventually make it into the Shopp plugin, but until then people are free to use this plugin. If you’re interested in anything else we do here at BraveNewCode, bounce around and take a look or follow us on Twitter.

We were flattered to hear from our awesome hosting provider, ServerBeach that they’d recently written a post about WPtouch, thanks guys!

ServerBeach Rocks

We’re honoured because to us, ServerBeach is one helluva hosting company. Fast, courteous response times to the very minor issues we’ve faced, extremely smooth and fast performance coupled with exceptional stability and capability have been beyond enjoyable. Since choosing to move over every one of our websites to their services a few months back from Media Temple and a string of nightmares (poor service, performance, security issues) we’ve not turned our heads.

We’re not affiliates and aren’t getting a penny for this praise. We just wanted to take the time to holler back some praise for a host that’s noticed us and our work.

I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship, doll.

We’ve just relaunched our website, and we think it sets the stage for the things we have planned for 2010. In this post we explore some of those things, which will hopefully answer the many e-mail, Twitter, and blog comment questions we’ve had in the last 6 weeks or so.

WPtouch 2.0

We’ve posted here a few times in the past about the release of WPtouch 2.0, and each time we’ve done so we anticipated it being released far sooner. The reason for its delays are many, but the good news is that it’s actively being worked on now.

Re-Write

We’re undertaking a complete re-write for 2.0, a necessary step to set the stage for multi-Theme support and some of the other features we have planned. We’ve learned much about the right way to build a WordPress plugin over the past few years, and want to start fresh to make sure that 2.0 is a model example of efficiency and poetry in code and thoughtful care in design.

Around The Corner

With the impending release of an Apple touch tablet (and many other touch tablets) and new updates to touch mobile phone software (Android 2.1 and iPhone 4.0) we’re hoping these new products and features enable us to do more with WPtouch. Rest assured that new capabilities will be added as things develop.

Support Forums

The goal in tearing apart the forums was also for a variety of reasons, but the most important being that we’re moving towards having a single account which you can use to post in the forums and on this site, and in the future any other BraveNewCode related services, sites, etc.

Secondly, the entire design for the Support Forums is being updated to reflect the new website, and until we settled on the website’s overall look, features and layout we couldn’t move too much on the Forums.

Expect them to be up and live again within the coming weeks.

WordTwit, Integrity

We’ll also be hard at work on improving WordTwit, our popular Twitter plugin for WordPress, and developing Integrity, our WordPress security plugin. Due to some of the recent work by the WordPress team it remains to be seen whether a plugin like Integrity is really needed, so we’ll be watching that development.

Shhhhhh Secrets!

Many of the things we’re planning require a little secrecy. As such we’ll post on the website when we’re ready to reveal juicy details, but you’re best served following us on Twitter to get first dibs on news, beta releases, and more goodies.

As you can see, things have changed quite a bit around these here parts. Dale and I are pleased to finally pull the curtain back on our brand new website and let everyone finally take a look. The original brainstorming and planning behind this new version started months ago down in Punta Cuna. While we were always happy with our old site, we strongly feel that this new site will be able to grow at the same pace as the other aspects of our business.

Website Features

When we started re-architecting this site, one of the crucial aspects during development was that it had to be easy for us to manage. Being only a two person company, we could easily spend a good portion of every week managing and maintaining our website and internet presence. While we wanted a fully functional website, we also didn’t want to be a slave to the maintenance of it.

So to that end here is a brief description of some of the cooler features that are under the hood here.

Flickr Driven Portfolios

If you head over to our porfolio or our product pages, you’ll see we’ve added a lot more information. One area that we’ve beefed up is the product and portfolio image galleries. In the past, we manually added the images using the WordPress system, and while that worked, it wasn’t very fast or efficient. On this new site, we’ve tied all the image galleries into Flickr, so they are completely managed and updated using Flickr and associated tools such as Flickr uploader. All the titles and descriptions for each image come from Flickr as well, and given Flickr’s AJAX content editing interface, it is a real snap to edit content on each of the images.

Remote Plugin Information

Most of our plugins are updated every week or so, and keeping our website up to date with regards to the changes in each version used to be time consuming. On our last website, we finally started pulling some information in from the content on WordPress.org, and have enhanced that even further with this version. On all our plugin pages the download links, change log, last time the product was updated, and associated file sizes are all updated remotely from information over at WordPress.org. From our side, as soon as we check in a new plugin version on the WordPress plugin repository, the associated information will automatically update itself on BraveNewCode.com.

Enhanced Fonts

It’s a real shame that the Internet has essentially been limited to only a handful of web-safe fonts. While there are various technologies that allow the use of additional fonts, we finally came across one that we wanted to try on BraveNewCode: Cufón. As you can see, most of the headings are now in a dynamically generated font called Steinem. We felt that this font added to the look and feel of our website, and fit in well with the spirit behind the content.

jQuery Love

You’ll find sprinkles of jQuery effects and ajax around the site (for example the nice tooltips that pop up on download buttons), all of which was added to make navigation easier and to add some UI gloss to the website.

Jenga: More Than Just A Game

We had a little fun updating the content in a few areas, as evidenced by our spiffy new page talking about our website design and development practices. While we take pride in the work we do, we also like having fun while doing it.

Support Forums

We know that many of our plugin users have been aching for support while the support forums have been down. We apologize again, but it’s the only way we can truly complete our client work, continue to develop our plugins, and finish the overhaul to the forums themselves.

Still More To Do

Not everything is completed with the site revamp, and we’ll be adding more in the coming weeks ahead. Enhancements to the blog, portfolio and product areas, as well as the addition of user accounts here at BraveNewCode.

The New Frontier

We still have a lot to roll out in the next few months here at BraveNewCode, but our new website was a pretty big bullet point on our to-do list, and we’re happy to finally cross it off and share the end result with everyone. By all means, drop us a comment and let us know what you think. Look forward to some more great stuff from The BraveNewCode team in the near future. Happy surfing!