Press Release: Xavisys Acquires Attackr.com – Web Development News Blogs
Xavisys, a WordPress development company specializing in web design, custom module programming, WordPress themes, and ecommerce solutions, has recently acquired the website Attackr.com. Aaron Campbell, founder and lead developer for the company, has stated that he wants to continue and expand the great community already present on the site in the future. “I want to stress that I plan on making it the same great resource that Sean did,” he said. “Xavisys now has two such sites (Attackr & Web Dev News) and is committed to benefiting the community with them.” In making the announcement, Xavisys also has unveiled some changes to the site that should make it easier for bloggers to use and attract more traffic to the site through search results.
The first major change is an upgrade to WordPress 2.6, which will give the bloggers a more powerful and intuitive interface to work with when writing their posts. Plans are already in place to upgrade the site to WordPress 2.7 next month when the new release is made public, and Attackr will undergo constant improvements to keep it at the leading edge of WordPress design. Xavisys is also focusing effort on SEO, and the site will continue to be a good place for developers to link to their design sites in order to build Page Rank. Attackr bloggers are encouraged to cross-post their articles and links on Web Dev News, and it is hoped that more sharing of information and resources between the two sites will build greater community and business to business networking opportunities among Open Source developers.
Other improvements to the site include new support for tags on content posts. All of the old articles on Attackr.com have been tagged with the categories that they were listed in originally, and authors can log in and update the settings with new tags that they feel are appropriate. For readers browsing the site, the tags should assist with easily finding related content, as the tags will now be listed at the bottom of every blog post. “Article Contributor” links will now appear automatically in the sidebar for authors with more than three articles on the site. However, these links will disappear within one month unless the author posts another article. This is to encourage and reward regular contributors to Attackr, and will hopefully lead to a more active community on the site.
The advantage of the sidebar “Article Contributor” links comes through SEO, and the display name can be customized in the control panel of the user profile section. The display name can be a personal name, user ID, or business, and the link can be directly to a member’s home page or business site. Ads have been adjusted on Attackr.com to not display for regular users. If a member logs in frequently, the ads will disappear. This will hopefully increase the enjoyment of the site for community bloggers creating content, while retaining the revenue possibilities on the site that cover its operational costs. In any case, Attackr will strive to retain its clean and simple design ethic while avoiding the overloading of content with advertisements for readers in order to provide information and resources in a user-friendly manner for all visitors.
Community members can now follow Attackr on Twitter, as well as streams from Web Dev News using the “WordPress Twitter Widget Pro Plugin” designed by Xavisys. Users can also follow new posts on both sites via RSS feeds. To subscribe, simply bookmark the following addresses in your reader:
Attackr: http://www.attackr.com/feed/
Web Dev News: http://webdevnews.net/feed/
Both sites now include “Share This” buttons to simplify the process of submitting user articles to social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Reddit, mySpace, Facebook, and others. Altogether, there is one click submission of articles to over forty social networking and bookmarking sites, as well as the ability to email or IM blog posts to friends. This should allow for contributing authors to easily network their articles on Attackr and Web Dev News online, and draw more attention to the information on the site.
Xavisys is also requesting user feedback and suggestions on how to make Attackr a better site in the future. Web developers and active contributors interested in collaboration and partnership on Attackr.com, or existing users with questions about the change-over and new features can contact the site admin through the Attackr.com contact form.
New users who blog about web development and web design issues can register for Attackr.com as well as register for Web Dev News.
To learn more about Xavisys, or to download their plugins and templates for WordPress, please visit http://xavisys.com/
Acquia Puts Drupal in the News
As many know, Xavisys recently launched a web developer resource site called WebDevNews. Jeffery Scott really helped kicked things off right with a great article: Acquia Gets Ready for Release of Carbon – Commercially Supported Drupal
He talks about Acquia, a new company that was launched by Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal. It will offer commercial support for Drupal. It seems that Acquia plans on supporting Drupal much the same way that Automattic supports WordPress and SixApart supports Movable Type. With this kind of support available to our clients, Xavisys will now be offering Drupal solutions in addition to the WordPress and custom solutions already offered.
All Work and No Play
Many of you may have noticed that my responses to comments have slowed, and new plugin releases and updates have slowed as well. I’m sorry for the lag, but I do have some great new stuff in the works! The good thing is, the reason for the delays is that Xavisys has been dealing with a higher than normal work load. Why is this good? Well, because the income from the work is what allows me to continue developing and releasing free stuff!
The work load has actually increased so much, that I’m looking for good, reliable help. I need a developer that I can count on who has knowledge and experience developing PHP. If you have experience with WordPress it’s a plus, but not required. Please contact me if you are interested.
The Heart of Open Source
I really wanted to talk about open source software, how it relates to Xavisys and specifically me, why I believe in it, and why I support it. I knew that before I did, I needed to address the issue of profiting from open source. Take the time to read that, it will give you a more accurate picture of my relationship with open source, as well as some tips on how you can benefit from a similar relationship.
I personally love open source, because I love the idea of benefiting others. I enjoy giving someone else an advantage that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Take WordPress for example. It benefits two sets of people, the users who get a better experience and better functionality, as well as the companies and developers who use it as a platform to build on. Sure, some of those companies are competitors, but I want them to succeed too. I certainly don’t want to move ahead in life at the expense of others, I’d much rather move ahead by helping others. In the end we can all benefit. Whenever I hear the saying “It’s lonely at the top,” I can’t help but think that maybe they did something wrong then. If they’d have worked
A Marketing Strategy You Can Believe In
Do you remember in the good old days, when you went to the market down the street because you knew the owner, John, and his kids went to school with yours? When you went to the mechanic across town, because you new that Dave wouldn’t ever charge you for something you didn’t need? I don’t, I’m only 26 after all, but I wish I did. I’m tired of choosing a company based on impersonal tv commercials, that the owner of the company may or may not have even seen. I don’t want the cheapest, I want the best value, and I don’t necessarily want whatever the latest celebrity wants.
Building a company is hard work, but I’ve decided to draw a line in the sand. Xavisys is going to be a great company because I stand behind it, and I’m an upstanding, honest person that you can get to know.
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Creative Brainstorming Meeting
Over the weekend I had James Pearson (of Surviving America and Acholi Beads) and Steven Homestead staying at my house. I couldn’t help but take advantage of this abundance of creativity I suddenly found at my disposal. As a developer rather than a designer, I find the creative process to be mysterious, possibly even magical. Seeing phrases like “Enslave the Internet” written on the windows of my home, I was far from disappointed as I was treated to a rare opportunity to take a peek inside the creative mind.
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Google Maps API
I started working some with the Google Maps API, and it’s pretty nice. The documentation is decent, the examples are good, etc. I realized that I’ve come to expect this from Google, so I wanted to take the time instead to point out that this is an exceptional product. For example, I began to look into making the scroll wheel zoom on my maps like they do on the Google Maps site. What does it entail? One line:
map.enableScrollWheelZoom();
However, as great of a product as it is, it seems to be lacking some things. For example, if I want an info window that gives the options to get directions to or from that location, I have to do all that myself. I have to generate the links, and make them replace the content of the info window with a form that I have to make, and I have to make that form run some JavaScript when executed to get the directions. Why? This has GOT to be a common task. Why not build it into the API? However, in the end, that pales in comparison to the real problem. There is no way to validate a Google Maps API key! Instead, you have to load JavaScript using that key, and it uses an alert to announce that the key was bad! No one wants a JavaScript alert to pop up on their page! Since I’m making a WordPress plugin out of this (teaser!), I needed to make sure that the users of my plugin wouldn’t have this issue. I ended up having to override the alert function on the options page for my plugin like this:
var KillAlerts = true;
var realAlert = alert;
var alert = new Function('a', 'if(!KillAlerts){realAlert(a)}');Then I added a function that runs on page load, re-enables the alerts, and checks if the key was valid:
function load()
{
// Re-anable alerts
KillAlerts = false;
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
// Key is valid
} else {
if (G_INCOMPAT) {
// Key is NOT valid.
} else {
// Can't tell if the Google API Key is valid, due to the browser not being compatible with the Google Maps API.
}
}
}There is no reason that it should be that complicated. They should have a web service where I can send a request to verify a key, or their script should set a global variable rather than send an ugly alert! In the end, it’s a great product, but I would have expected that these kind of rough edges would have been taken care of by now. Google, you make me sad.
