Wow. That was fast. Not less than 72 hours ago we released RC1 of 2.9 and we got such a good response from testing that we decided to skip the two week testing period for a release of WordPress 2.9 “Carmen”. Early Holiday Present. So get it today using the automatic upgrade feature.

Expect WordPress 3.0 released around the spring time because of the large changes to the core including WPMU integration and more media stuff (yay!).

Have a very safe holidays!

A quick note: If you run a stand-alone version, not hosted on WordPress.com, be sure you have at least MySQL version 4.1.2.  All backwards compatibility was taken out of 2.9.

WordPress 2.9 RC1 is out and ready for use and abuse! Please update all live sites using WordPress to this version so we can now get a huge sampling on any other errors before we mark it ‘GOLD’!. Be sure to submit tickets to the trac site so we know about them.

The faster we can get reports back, the faster we can give you an early present for the holidays and for the New Year!

Translators: You have two weeks to get your translations into the system before Gold. Thanks!

I wished I used widgets. Why havn’t it? Because the coding around them is mostly hardcoded. Lets take a common scenario that I see all the time and from other people:

User A downloads Plugin A. Plugin A has a widget which has hardcoded data output. User A has a custom theme (or a downloaded theme.) and Plugin A does not conform to the theme’s design making User A scramble for help. They check the WordPress.org forums for help in getting Widget of Plugin A changed. User A gets no help. Uninstalls the Plugin A and then is one less user that Author has their plugin installed.

Now my way of what might be coming to a WordPress enabled site soon (3.x.x would be the earliest):

User A downloads Plugin A. Plugin A has a widget. User A has a custom theme (or a downloaded theme) and that theme has a class that extends Walker_Widget called My_Walker_Widget. User A enables that Widget and it looks nice and pretty with their theme. They smile.

When the theme author updates their theme, all User’s A widgets will look like they belong there.

This subject is not very well documented anywhere in the WordPress Codex or online. I only found one site that talked about a custom walker class.

What is a Walker Class?

A walker class allows you to manipulate how data is displaied on your blog without having to modify the core files. What ever methods you do not override use the default method in the Walker class that you Extend.

As you know, I was at WordCamp NYC 2009 and meeting everyone was just one aspect of the trip putting IRC, email, and photos to real life.

One thing that was very cool since we already knew almost everyone background meeting everyone was just like lets continue this conversation we been having for years.

It’s a sad day, but also a day to rejoice! WordCamp NYC 2009 is officially over and I just wanted it to continue all week. But if that was the case, registration would be like $500. Two days was good enough.

The second day was pretty much in Mason Hall (for me at least). There was unconference sessions going on where we were in the main classroom complex yesterday. For those who want a listing can go here.

Today (or tonight since I am posting this at night) was the first/end of Day One of WordCamp NYC 2009. This was also my first ever WordCamp. I was really physic. I left my friend’s place on Roosevelt Island around 6:45am hitching the “F” line to 23^rd and 6^th Avenue.

Once I got off I was really confused on where I was because I was not used to being in that location. With the sun not out as well… it was really hard to determine the points of the compass. After finding someone else who was also looking for Baruch College on 23^rd and Lex. After we got another set of directions, we were on our way. A few minutes later I arrived at the registration area for WordCamp NYC 2009!