Will Write for Food

A friend called me today to tell me she has been offered publication of one of her poems in a national magazine. Yea! Then she says she will be paid $2. per word. Now if I were paid $2 per word for one of my novels, it would be a deal to remember. (The novel I've finished recently is about 108,000 words.) I think I could settle for that. My friend's poem, however, is 32 words. She says she spent sixteen to eighteen hours on it all told. Four dollars an hour then - at most. That sounds like a lot of time, but poets tell me  they never feel like a poem is finished. They always come back to rework it over and over. But then I realize most of us not-so-famous writers say the same thing: we'd write whether we were paid or not, or sometimes that we just want to make enough to be able to keep writing. I suppose we just have to celebrate being "good enough" for a magazine and remember, basically, we'd write for food.  

WordPress 4.0 Beta 1

WordPress 4.0 Beta 1 is now available!

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 4.0, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you'll want "bleeding edge nightlies"). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

4.0 is due out next month, but to get there, we need your help testing what we’ve been working on:

• Previews of embedding via URLs in the visual editor and the “Insert from URL” tab in the media modal. Try pasting a URL (such as a WordPress.tv or YouTube video) onto its own line in the visual editor. (#28195, #15490)
• The Media Library now has a “grid” view in addition to the existing list view. Clicking on an item takes you into a modal where you can see a larger preview and edit information about that attachment, and you can navigate between items right from the modal without closing it. (#24716)
• We’re freshening up the plugin install experience. You’ll see some early visual changes as well as more information when searching for plugins and viewing details. (#28785, #27440)
• Selecting a language when you run the installation process. (#28577)
• The editor intelligently resizes and its top and bottom bars pin when needed. Browsers don’t like to agree on where to put things like cursors, so if you find a bug here, please also let us know your browser and operating system. (#28328)
• We’ve made some improvements to how your keyboard and cursor interact with TinyMCE views such as the gallery preview. Much like the editor resizing and scrolling improvements, knowing about your setup is particularly important for bug reports here. (#28595)
• Widgets in the Customizer are now loaded in a separate panel. (#27406)
• We’ve also made some changes to some formatting functions, so if you see quotes curling in the wrong direction, please file a bug report.

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.

Developers: Never fear, we haven’t forgotten you. There’s plenty for you, too – more on that in upcoming posts. In the meantime, check out the API for panels in the Customizer.

Happy testing!

Plugins, editor
Media, things in between
Please help look for bugs

WordPress 3.9.1 Maintenance Release

After three weeks and more than 9 million downloads of WordPress 3.9, we’re pleased to announce that WordPress 3.9.1 is now available.

This maintenance release fixes 34 bugs in 3.9, including numerous fixes for multisite networks, customizing widgets while previewing themes, and the updated visual editor. We’ve also made some improvements to the new audio/video playlists feature and made some adjustments to improve performance. For a full list of changes, consult the list of tickets and the changelog.

If you are one of the millions already running WordPress 3.9, we’ve started rolling out automatic background updates for 3.9.1. For sites that support them, of course.

Download WordPress 3.9.1 or venture over to Dashboard ? Updates and simply click “Update Now.”

Thanks to all of these fine individuals for contributing to 3.9.1: Aaron Jorbin, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Ozz, Brian Richards, Chris Blower, Corey McKrill, Daniel Bachhuber, Dominik Schilling, feedmeastraycat, Gregory Cornelius, Helen Hou-Sandi, imath, Janneke Van Dorpe, Jeremy Felt, John Blackbourn, Konstantin Obenland, Lance Willett, m_i_n, Marius Jensen, Mark Jaquith, Milan Dini?, Nick Halsey, pavelevap, Scott Taylor, Sergey Biryukov, and Weston Ruter.

WordPress 4.0 Beta 2

WordPress 4.0 Beta 2 is now available for download and testing. This is software still in development, so we don't recommend that you run it on a production site. To get the beta, try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you'll want "bleeding edge nightlies"). Or you can download the beta here (zip).

For more of what's new in version 4.0, check out the Beta 1 blog post. Some of the changes in Beta 2 include:

• Further refinements for the the plugin installation and media library experiences.
• Updated TinyMCE, which now includes better indentation for lists and the restoration of the color picker.
• Cookies are now tied to a session internally, so if you have trouble logging in, #20276 may be the culprit.
• Various bug fixes (there were nearly 170 changes since last week).

If you think you've found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. Or, if you're comfortable writing a bug report, file one on the WordPress Trac. There, you can also find a list of known bugs and everything we've fixed.