Author: Lance Willett

My name is Lance, I am a blogger, product manager, software developer, and business executive creating high-quality, engaging, and customer-centered experiences for people online. México-born. Chief Product and Technology Officer at Tumblr (Automattic).

We’re Presenting at WordCamp San Francisco 2011

Three Theme Wranglers will be involved with theme-related sessions at this year’s WordCamp San Francisco (Aug 12–14, 2011).

Themes, themes, and more themes! If you’re in town for WordCamp please say hello, we’d love to meet you.

Update: Videos of WCSF 2011 presentations are now live on wordpress.tv.

Ian Stewart Speaking at FOWD London 2011

I’m super excited to announce that our very own Theme Wrangler Ian Stewart will be speaking next week at FOWD London 2011. He’ll be presenting on WordPress and themes in a talk titled “Power Your Design With WordPress” — read more about it on the FOWD London schedule page.

If you’re attending FOWD London be sure to come to Ian’s talk and learn how to kick-start your theme design and development. It’s going to be an action-packed, information-filled 40 minutes.

(And come say “Howdy” to the entire Theme Team, we’ll be there with bells on.)

WP_Filesystem Tutorial on ottopress.com

Tutorial: Using the WP_Filesystem

Writing files from code, whether it be from a theme or from a plugin, is generally bad mojo. However understanding why you shouldn’t is confusing to many, and then understanding why you shouldn’t do-it-yourself and should use the WP_Filesystem is even more confusing.

A great writeup by Otto on how, why, and when to use WP_Filesystem to write files from a WordPress theme or plugin, including code samples and a demo plugin.

HTML5 Edition for Web Developers

If you’re like me and dread reading detailed specs for web technologies, but want to dig into and learn the details that matter to your work, check out the WHATWG HTML5 specification for web developers by Ben Schwarz.

The focus of this specification is readability and ease of access. Unlike the full HTML specification, this “web developer edition” removes information that only browser vendors need know.

Subversion Cheatsheets

Version control is a key part of a successful software project, and we use Subversion heavily at Automattic. All our themes, side projects, and even PSD files go into SVN repositories.

We often talk to theme designers that are getting into more advanced theme development who need a quick crash course on using Subversion. As part our tips for version control we recommend keeping a handy reference guide at your fingertips for common Subversion commands.

Continue reading “Subversion Cheatsheets”