Earlier today, Dougal tweeted about DRUPLEH, a satirical news site about Drupal. If you haven't caught his tweet, my retweet or any other mention about this, go check it now. It's brilliant, it's fun, it's awesome, it's entertaining. We *need* to have such a thing for WordPress.

We so need, that we must haz: Project WordPreh is ready to get off the ground and now need some voluntrollsteers to really start and make something funny with this!

As I envision it (but it's not like I'm proclaiming myself the leader of the project) , the site would be trolling on fun stuff, would be mocking devs about their goofs, would be bashing other platforms about their misfortunes or successes. It would be run by several peeps with a good knowledge of what's going on and enough sense of humor to be derisive of themselves when deserved. It would be making fun of others but keep on the funny side of thing and avoid being just mean (which does require quite some editorial skills, says Ozh who has been Mighty Chief Redactor of his uni's satirical paper for quite some time). Maybe it might try to spread totally obvious false rumors, too :Þ

It could be like this, just better and funnier and with *real* news too :) (click for bigger)

The DRUPLEH site, which I really like, is a simple Tumblr-like blog with links only. That's a good start, maybe WordPreh could also feature some WTF-code-snippets as I'm sure there are tons out there. Yes, the upcoming post format feature is exactly what we need here.

So far, to take the plunge and evolve from a fun idea to a real website, the project needs:

• a logo (should be OK)
• a theme (might be in the works already)
• a team

What do you think about this whole thing? Sounds fun? Should be different? Do you think you could contribute to this? :)

Edit: WordPreh. Eheh.

Sometimes users of stuff I code are nice enough to send me a donation that fits into a Paypal email notification. And sometimes users are just crazy cool and their donation require the postman in person :)
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This is a short PSA to warn potential buyers: don't buy The Internet is a Playground from David Thorne aka @27bslash6. It's a scam.
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Obligatory geekness and proselytism: "Ask me about WordPress"

I just got it in the mail today so I instantly dropped all current affairs to take the picture :) Love this t-shirt? Get yours now on WordPress Shirts where you can vote for the next design they'll print (my favorite one is Powered by WP by the way). I also dig their fan section when you can submit your mugshot :)

Wear WordPress!

From my experience, here is how time is spent when writing a book about WordPress plugins:

Seriously, the brainstorm part is ridiculously important.

Writing standalone snippets only is neat sometimes, but on the long run it might leave the reader with the impression they won't be able to glue the various parts into a functional plugin themselves. The perfect plugin that will illustrate a given topic has to be:

• very short: nobody wants to read 50 lines of add_options_page() and HTML if you just want to show how to add a nonce and verify it
• open and inspirational: the plugin should give the user ideas on where to reuse this code, how to improve a plugin they made in the past. Giving an example of a very focused plugin such as guiding a missile may be neat, but it'll be useful to the reader only if they want to code the same plugin.
• useful: it's always tempting to illustrate a concept with short and near-to-useless code because you're more focused on the concept than on the illustration.

So far, in each of the chapters I wrote for the book, there will be 4 or 5 plugins that, I hope, will meet all these criteria (short, useful, easy to build on), and Brad and Justin are also making a fantastic job with very neat plugin ideas.

And, yeah, I like to draw pie charts :)

Disclaimer: This one is more awesome than a Nintendo Sixty-FOOOOOOOOOOUR for Christmas. You will want to buy it. You will buy it.

The tshirt itself is pretty regular: black, a not too fancy "Let Your Dark Side Out" slogan across the chest. Nothing to scream for.

But then you sort of flip the shirt up onto your face and reveal its unique awesomeness in a BWAAAARRRH! BRAINS! moment.

I believe this tshirt was originally promo material for an episode of the Resident Evil video game series, but you can actually buy it from CapCom.

Reactions to this tshirt are usually mixed. Kids love it (either kids, or those who feel like they are a teenager trapped into a 35+ years old body), while random colleagues just mutter about how you're the new weirdo around.

It will be a matter of personal preference or a matter of clients asking for it, but I bet this one is going to be a frequent question in the next months: "How do I remove the Admin Bar?".

Ahah. I'm so funny.

This will probably slightly change as this component is heavily under works, but as of now this short plugin will do:

Either make this a regular plugin in wp-content/plugins/ and activate it, or just drop it in wp-content/mu-plugins/.

Update: now a downloadable plugin.

Update 2: this was a sort of a proof of concept. Now that WordPress 3.1 is released and has a per-user option to disable it, this plugin is incomplete: if you want to disable the admin bar, also hide the option as Pete Mall explains.

(Note that for some reason our system calculated that our Technical Editor @nacin knows more than the 100% you can actually know about WordPress, which made the system crash, guess who's to blame)

No, seriously: I'm learning a TON of stuff, even on subjects I thought I was proficient in. Stating the obvious: read the source, document what you read, write plugins using what you read, and you'll learn things.

This shirt nicely matches my mood sometimes at work, especially if the day is crippled with meetings. I like its aesthetic simplicity, the university athletic look and the "subtle" details that completely escape the non-initiated bystander (anno 1337 and the latin motto "Subsiste Sermonem Statim" which apparently translates to "Stop Speaking Immediately")

Seriously, sporting a giant "STFU" sign right in front of some people is refreshing sometimes :) Bought from the funny people over at ThinkGeek, thick, top quality, well worth the $16 or so.

I've just set up blog.yourls.org where hopefully I will, guess what, post about YOURLS development. I think the major stuff will be cross posted here too, at least for now, and I'll blog there about all the misc and fun stuff I never write about (like plugins! owwww plugins!)

On a WordPress related side note, the theme running on blog.yourls.org is my first attempt at making a child theme. The whole theme was done in less than 20 minutes with 30 lines of CSS and nothing more. Child themes are Viagra for unskilled and lazy theme designers \o/