<div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wordpress.org/news/2014/03/wordpress-3-9-beta-1/' title='I’m excited to announce that the first beta of WordPress 3.9 is now available for testing. WordPress 3.9 is due out next month — but in order to hit that goal, we need your help testing all of the goodies we’ve added: We updated TinyMCE, the software powering the visual editor, to the latest version. […]'>WordPress 3.9 Beta 1</a> <span class="rss-date">March 11, 2014</span><div class='rssSummary'>I’m excited to announce that the first beta of WordPress 3.9 is now available for testing. WordPress 3.9 is due out next month — but in order to hit that goal, we need your help testing all of the goodies we’ve added: We updated TinyMCE, the software powering the visual editor, to the latest version. […]</div></li></ul></div><div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/wordpress-beta-testers-start-your-engines-3-9-beta-1-released?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=wordpress-beta-testers-start-your-engines-3-9-beta-1-released' title='photo credit: Huasonic – cc If it’s true that the best gifts come in small packages, then WordPress 3.9 is set to be a stellar release. It’s fully of tiny improvements that improve the publishing experience, especially when it comes to editing content. You can now check it out first-hand, since 3.9 Beta 1 was released today. The official release is scheduled to drop during the week of April 14th. Andrew Nacin announced the beta with the customary haiku, which nicely sums up what you’ll find in 3.9: Lots of improvements Little things go a long way Please test beta one There are some exciting new features coming in 3.9, but a good portion of core development has also been dedicated to iterating on features introduced in previous releases. Nacin summarized a few of the major new items that need testing:  Updated to TinyMCE 4.0 Widget customizer now rolled into core for live previews while managing widgets WP 3.8′s theme browsing experience extended to the theme installer Live preview for galleries in the editor – no more placeholder Drag-and-drop images directly onto the editor to upload Multiple improvements to image editing New audio/video playlists  Nacin asked WordPress users what they’re most excited about for WordPress 3.9 and here are a few responses from the community: @nacin it&#039;s small, but i love the improvements to editing images and no more new windows. sometimes it&#039;s the little things. — David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) March 11, 2014  @nacin Bringing external js libraries up to their current release versions? #butimjustweird — George Stephanis (@daljo628) March 11, 2014  @nacin the ability to position cropped images. It&#039;s a small but very useful. I&#039;m sure others will point out the major features ;) — Syed Balkhi (@syedbalkhi) March 11, 2014  How to Test a WordPress Beta Release All of these enhancements need to be tested, as some are still a little rough around the edges. You don’t have to be an expert developer to get on board to test the upcoming 3.9 release. All you need is a test environment. Install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin and select “bleeding edge nightlies.” Alternatively, you can simply download the zip file for the beta. If you think you’ve found a bug, feel free to post it on the Alpha/Beta forum. That is the easiest entry point for testing the beta and being part of making it better. If you’re able to submit a bug on WordPress core trac, that’s even better. For more details on the specific issues to test, make sure to check out the 3.9 Beta 1 announcement post.'>WPTavern: WordPress Beta Testers, Start Your Engines: 3.9 Beta 1 Released</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wptavern.com/buddypress-theme-development-get-started-building-your-own-themes?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=buddypress-theme-development-get-started-building-your-own-themes' title='The BuddyPress Theme Development book hit the shelves late last year and I had the chance to review it for our readers. This book is a much-needed resource for the BuddyPress community and could not have come at a better time. BuddyPress theming has evolved over the years but it has always had a steep learning curve. Part of the reason for this is that theming practices have been in flux as BuddyPress has improved. Contributors to the codex have worked hard to make sure the basics are in place but more in-depth tutorials tend to be scattered all over the web. Now that theme compatibility is in place to allow BP to work with any WordPress theme, Tammie Lister decided that it was the right time to make a comprehensive guide. Lister is a long-time BuddyPress contributor who now works as a Theme Wrangler for Automattic. If you’re looking for an expert who will hold your feet to the fire when it comes to WordPress theming standards, Lister has you covered. An Introduction to Basic WordPress Theming One thing I appreciate about the book is that it does not assume the reader to already be an expert at WordPress theming. Lister takes a holistic approach and introduces the differences between social networking and building a community. While BuddyPress provides social networking features, building a community involves more than just activating the plugin and hoping people will use the site. Understanding the differences will help to shape the design process. She starts with the basics and provides a step-by-step guide for setting BuddyPress up on your server. She introduces theming by walking you through creating a child theme. You’ll learn all the basics, such as how to use your browser to inspect elements on the page in order to get the right selectors for making CSS changes. The book then moves into a basic introduction to WordPress theming before delving deeper into BuddyPress template hierarchy. If you’re familiar with WordPress template hierarchy then BuddyPress will come naturally, as it works the same way. A Hands-On Guide to Creating BuddyPress Themes With the theming basics under your belt, the next section puts you well on your way to building your own BuddyPress feature templates. This is necessary if you want to radically change the look of your community to customize it beyond the stock BuddyPress UI. Here’s where the hands-on fun begins. Lister walks the reader through building a sample responsive BuddyPress theme with unique elements, custom fonts, navigation menus, custom BuddyPress templates and more. If you’re a developer who has just taken on a BuddyPress project for the first time and you’re new to BP theme development, this manual is a must-have. I highly recommend the process Lister users for getting novice theme developers up to speed on the basics. You’ll go from installing BuddyPress to creating your very own theme in a short amount of time. Experienced BuddyPress developers will also appreciate the book as a reference for the proper way to customize themes. BuddyPress Theme Development is available from Amazon. You an also purchase it directly from Packt Publishing.'>WPTavern: BuddyPress Theme Development: Get Started Building Your Own Themes</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wordpress.org/news/2014/03/wordpress-3-9-beta-1/' title='I’m excited to announce that the first beta of WordPress 3.9 is now available for testing. WordPress 3.9 is due out next month — but in order to hit that goal, we need your help testing all of the goodies we’ve added:  We updated TinyMCE, the software powering the visual editor, to the latest version. Be on the lookout for cleaner markup. Also try the new paste handling — if you paste in a block of text from Microsoft Word, for example, it will no longer come out terrible. (The “Paste from Word” button you probably never noticed has been removed.) It’s possible some plugins that added stuff to the visual editor (like a new toolbar button) no longer work, so we’d like to hear about them (#24067). (And be sure to open a support thread for the plugin author.) We’ve added widget management to live previews (the customizer). Please test editing, adding, and rearranging widgets! (#27112) We’ve also added the ability to upload, crop, and manage header images, without needing to leave the preview. (#21785) We brought 3.8′s beautiful new theme browsing experience to the theme installer. Check it out! (#27055) Galleries now receive a live preview in the editor. Upload some photos and insert a gallery to see this in action. (#26959) You can now drag-and-drop images directly onto the editor to upload them. It can be a bit finicky, so try it and help us work out the kinks. (#19845) Some things got improved around editing images. It’s a lot easier to make changes to an image after you insert it into a post (#24409) and you no longer get kicked to a new window when you need to crop or rotate an image (#21811). New audio/video playlists. Upload a few audio or video files to test these. (#26631)  If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything we’ve fixed so far. This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site just to play with the new version. To test WordPress 3.9, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”). Or you can download the beta here (zip).  DEVELOPERS! Hello! There’s lots for you, too. Please test your plugins and themes! There’s a lot of great stuff under the hood in 3.9 and we hope to blog a bit about them in the coming days. If you haven’t been reading the awesome weekly summaries on the main core development blog, that’s a great place to start. (You should definitely follow that blog.) For now, here are some things to watch out for when testing:  The load process in multisite got rewritten. If you notice any issues with your network, see #27003. We now use the MySQL Improved (mysqli) database extension if you’re running a recent version of PHP (#21663). Please test your plugins and see that everything works well, and please make sure you’re not calling mysql_* functions directly. Autosave was refactored, so if you see any issues related to autosaving, heartbeat, etc., let us know (#25272). Library updates, in particular Backbone 1.1 and Underscore 1.6 (#26799). Also Masonry 3 (#25351), PHPMailer (#25560), Plupload (#25663), and TinyMCE (#24067). TinyMCE 4.0 is a major update. Please see TinyMCE’s upgrade guide and our implementation ticket for more. If you have any questions or problems, please open a thread in the support forums.  Happy testing! Lots of improvements Little things go a long way Please test beta one '>Dev Blog: WordPress 3.9 Beta 1</a></li></ul></div><div class="rss-widget"><ul><li class='dashboard-news-plugin'><span>Popular Plugin:</span> <a href='http://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-plugin/' class='dashboard-news-plugin-link'>Contact Form</a></h5>&nbsp;<span>(<a href='plugin-install.php?tab=plugin-information&amp;plugin=contact-form-plugin&amp;_wpnonce=2b1234a984&amp;TB_iframe=true&amp;width=600&amp;height=800' class='thickbox' title='Contact Form'>Install</a>)</span></li></ul></div>