We did the drawing of the winner this weekend at the WordCamp Germany right after our session, where we also introduced the new features of the upcoming version 1.4. Congratulation to all winners and if you didn't win, get a WordCamp Germany special discount of 20% until October 3rd 2011. Just use the coupon code WCK11.

The lucky winners are:

Gabe Casalett
peimant
marius_stuparu
Affan Ruslan
محسن غیاثی (http://www.newbie.ir)

We will contact each winner and they can also choose their favorite Childtheme. Congrats!

Everybody else might grab a copy for 20% discount!

You can check out some pictures of WordCamp Germany 2011 in Cologne here.

If you are in the environment of customers, it may be that you don't want the feature pointer - different scenarios are possible. But here it also relies on the WordPress hooks so you can intervene in various ways. One idea is to adjust the user settings of the user, as the feature pointer is using Javascript to drop an option in the table, so that the user does not read the instructions again. Alternatively, you can disable it via hook, following solution paste into a small Plugin or the functions.php of your theme (whereas the second solution isn't the best).

<code>
add_filter( 'show_wp_pointer_admin_bar', '__return_false' );
</code>

If you don't have the admin bar not active, then it won't show a feature pointer to it.

Also you can use the hooks to create your own feature pointer. Without adjustment in the design and position is the following simple example conceivable. If the position is changed, it is sufficient to adapt the script section JS-function pointer() in the PHP function get_content_in_wp_pointer(). The function pointer() can be controlled by various parameters (content, position, arrow) .

function get_content_in_wp_pointer() {
	$pointer_content  = '<h3>' . __( 'WP Pointer with version 3.3.', 'my_textdomain' ) . '</h3>';
	$pointer_content .= '<p>' . __( 'Add your own informations to WP Pointer.', 'my_textdomain' ) . '</p>';

?>
<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
jQuery(document).ready( function($) {
	$('#wpadminbar').pointer({
		content: '<?php echo $pointer_content; ?>',
		position: {
			my: 'left top',
			at: 'center bottom',
			offset: '-25 0'
		},
		close: function() {
			setUserSetting( 'p1', '1' );
		}
	}).pointer('open');
});
//]]>
</script>
<?php
}

function fb_enqueue_wp_pointer( $hook_suffix ) {
	$enqueue = FALSE;

	$admin_bar = get_user_setting( 'p1', 0 ); // check settings on user
	// check if admin bar is active and default filter for wp pointer is true
	if ( ! $admin_bar && apply_filters( 'show_wp_pointer_admin_bar', TRUE ) ) {
		$enqueue = TRUE;
		add_action( 'admin_print_footer_scripts', 'get_content_in_wp_pointer' );
	}
	// in true, include the scripts
	if ( $enqueue ) {
		wp_enqueue_style( 'wp-pointer' );
		wp_enqueue_script( 'wp-pointer' );
		wp_enqueue_script( 'utils' ); // for user settings
	}
}
add_action( 'admin_enqueue_scripts', 'fb_enqueue_wp_pointer' );

Please note: The implementation is based on a nightly build of WordPress, not the final Release 3.3 and thus might have some changes or other solutions are possible in a later version. Therefore, please validate according to the version of WordPress the solution. As a tip this should be enough - anything else is creativity and your skills.

FYI we don't use an affiliate link, so we are not biased. It's just a way to say thank you!

Optional Output of HTML5

Xtreme One is the first and only WordPress Framework/Theme, which is able to output HTML5 if you want to. Just with a simple click in your backend! Therefore Xtreme One is ready for the future of website programming.

The HTML5 elements of the main container like header, teaser, sidebars, footer and site info are adjustable via a select box. Additionally the Widgets and the WordPress Gallery were improved to meet the requirements of HTML5.

Title Elements can be chosen as you like to

Another nice new feature is to be able to select the elements for blog title, description, sidebar and widget titles.

WordPress 3.1 Ready

Of course Xtreme One 1.1 will be compatible with the upcoming WordPress version 3.1!

Get the most innovative WordPress Framework now and be ready for the future in website programming!

The Admin Bar is in backend and frontend available and makes a fast access to backend areas possible. This advantage applies also to the Debug Bar.

Why another WordPress Framework?

My idea of a WordPress Framework starts where most of the others are given up - to give the user the complete control of his layout. That's why Xtreme One is worldwide the only WordPress Framework, which is able to create fixed, fluid and flexible layouts. Create in a matter of minutes your own desired website layout with just a few mouse clicks! Check out the video and get convinced by Xtreme One.

Focus on the most important thing – your vision!

Efficient functions enables you to work extremely fast, without writing code. Hence, you have more time to create your design.

It's the details that matter

• 6 layout variations in content area.
• Widths of sidebars flexible adjustable in px, em or %
• Free positionable navigations with 4 different stylesheets for WP Menus, page or categories
• Able to add teaser and footer with dynamical created widget areas in 28 layout variations and up to 5 columns.
• Layoutmanager  - different layouts and sidebars
• 12 additional widgets: 3 slider widgets, 5 widgets for column and row based output of your articles and pages, printable and accessible tabber, last tweets, newsletter and social links.
• 3 comment form layouts, additional text fields, adjustable avatar size and alignment
• Combining of stylesheets and stylesheet compression.
• Multisite and Localization ready, in English and German.
• Extensive documentation, support forum, knowledgebase, free updates
• and a lot more

Launch rebate until December 13th

To celebrate the launch of Xtreme One Framework, we will give you a $10 rebate until December 13th. Just type in LAUNCH in the Discount Coupon field when you check out.

And that's only the beginning!

In the coming months, we will come up with many more innovative ideas for Xtreme One and we will try to make Xtreme One the best WordPress Framework out there. I know it's tough goal, but we will try to deliver!

Buy it now for a limited time for $69,95 and receive free updates with even more features in the future. We hope you will enjoy Xtreme One!

We are looking forward to hear your feedback!

Some theme authors wanted more defined formats - they wanted the feature "post formats". This new functionality will be available in WordPress 3.1 and displays an additional meta-information. The Codex for this functionality is available already, and now it's up to the theme authors to use this new feature.

To use this function, you have to activate it with the Theme. This is controlled, similar to other theme features since version 3.0, over a function. The following syntax gives some of the possible post formats and these can then be used directly on the article, as the following screenshot shows.

add_theme_support( 'post-formats', array( 'aside', 'audio', 'image', 'video' ) );

Just put the code into your functions.php of your Themes.

As possible keys are the following values available.

• default
• aside
• chat
• gallery
• link
• image
• quote
• status
• video
• audio

Like in thumblr you can design the according article. Via the defined values you can use this across themes. The format will be output with the function body_class() for instant, which creates a class, which you can access via CSS. An exmaple for the value Aside of the post format.

<body class="single single-post postid-52 single-format-aside">

Alternatively there are conditional tags and functions to get to the assigned type:

 echo get_post_format();

As so often depends the creativity and usage on the developer. The biggest benefit is probably that defined values exist and as a theme author you can respond to these formats and as a developer you don't have to create a new meta box.

Update: The UI received an update, see Andrew's comment:

What does it mean exactly?

Especially in Germany we have the tradition of an Advent Calendar. An Advent calendar is a special calendar which is used to count down the days from December the 1st until Christmas Eve, December 24th.

An Advent Calendar has 24 doors, one of which is opened every day during Advent. Each door opens to reveal something, such as a toy or a chocolate item.

At WP Engineer, we thought we should do the same and open a door every day, which contains a little gift for our readers, by providing them a WordPress tip or trick each day. So we hope you will be exciting to see what tip, hack or news will be behind the door the next morning. Enjoy a new little WordPress gift every day until December 24th.

Sign up on our RSS Feed or follow us on Twitter, so you won't miss it when we open a new advent door every day!

So I started to research the problem, read other articles about this topic, made some tests and found out some surprising results.

Research and Incredible things in PHP itself

PHP is as pure and untyped interpreted language designed with a focus on massive text manipulation. Therefore, I expect no deal with memory, as in high optimized programs in C or C++ . However, what I was reading in an error report of PHP Trac made my jaw dropped. That they deal with so much memory just to get more speed is ridiculous. Here is the link to the entry PHP Trac #41053. Let me try to explain.

Let's start with the example code of the PHP Trac entry:

<?php
function getMemoryUsage()
{
    return round(memory_get_usage() / (1024*1024), 1)." MB";
}
function printMemoryUsage()
{
    print("Memory = ".getMemoryUsage()." <br>\n");
}
printMemoryUsage();

$end = 1000000;
$array = array();
printMemoryUsage();
for($i = 0; $i < $end; $i++)
{
    $array[$i] = 0;
}
printMemoryUsage();
?>

What does this code do exactly? Not much, except:

• Can output Memory usage
• To fill an array in a loop with keys as a serial number and value 0
• The loop generated 1000000 (one million) pairs, the number (integer) to 0
• It has been tested under a 32bit system

Naively, I would make the following statement: I have 2 integer numbers 32bit with 4 bytes and multiply 1000000 times = 2 * 4 * 1000000 = 8000000 (eight million) bytes net amount of memory. For this I reckon about 10% overhead for the hash management, makes about 9 million bytes or 8.5 MB.

Now the great results with PHP 5.1.1:

Memory = 0 MB
Memory = 0 MB
Memory = 57.5 MB

… and as icing on the cake PHP 5.2.1:

Memory = 0.1 MB
Memory = 0.1 MB
Memory = 99.4 MB

Apart from the fact that in PHP 5.2.2 then again it looks like in PHP 5.1.2, I think 58 megabytes is a lot of meat which PHP needs just to store the data.

It also received an immediate explanation from the PHP team, why this is so. The internal structure of the variables of PHP can be anything at any time and must be convertible. Therefore, a simple integer value assigns in this way, according to data and my own PHP C code analysis, actually 68 bytes.

Thus, if each variable has an overhead of 64 bytes + load (string is usually more than just 4 bytes), then you can easily figure out how many variables you get in memory before the memory limit is exceeded. And we have not even calculated the program code itself yet!

Even worse is it in 64 bit systems, because the C structures of PHP are not correctly aligned in memory, as the IA64 architectures would like to have. There is thus additionally memory "padded" and an entry can have 80 bytes or larger. So that's why PHP consumes on 64 bit systems significantly more memory than 32bit. How the 64 bit programming looks like and where the pitfalls are is explained here: Data Alignment when Migrating to 64-Bit Intel® Architecture.

The lack of understanding of hosting for 64 bit systems

Lovely Hoster, when you offer customers a 64bit server with 64bit PHP, then 32M or 40M aren't enough. The internal architecture of PHP is not yet fully adapted to 64-bit systems, so it would be entirely memory-saving. In addition, the pointer in C code are actually twice as large, so executable code in memory and generated structures also need more space.
So either give the customer a choice or provide them adequately storage, everything else is self-deception and foolish.

WordPress Core Team and the carelessness in dealing with memory

I have a couple of words for the WordPress Core Team. You do make a good job. Everybody makes errors and bugs and the least think a new feature throughout. But you should not close your eyes and ears to the needs of the community that has made you so big.

function wp_initial_constants( ) {
    global $blog_id;

    // set memory limits
    if ( !defined('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT') ) {
        if( is_multisite() ) {
            define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');
        } else {
            define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '32M');
        }
    }

(from the core file: default-constants.php)

It is finally time to admit what BS you have put in the code, and finally realize that WordPress 3.0 in a default installation will barely able to run on 32M and WordPress Multisite under 64MB is an illusion.

Might also mean that it is more difficult for users abroad with another not built-in language, go ahead and test it on your systems! Then you will notice that your implementation of the language files, processed under the above Memory usage of variables from a 360 kByte WordPress language file costs easily 4MB memory. With the Theme and each translatable Plugin more memory usage will be added and you probably see the end of the memory very soon.

What does it mean for me personally?

I will strive to continue its efforts to identify the memory hog and examine my own code to see if I can reduce the memory usage.
Therefore, there will be an update of my Plugin, which can then handle even the most adverse conditions with WordPress language files.
In addition I have limited a multisite installation artificially to 32M. Without a language file I'm already at 22M, with loaded language file it is already more than 26M and got another 4 - 6M space for the language file processing. Normally this isn't sufficient at all, as you already read above.

That is why there is this new feature in my next update and my Plugin will scan under these conditions WordPress and large Plugins. You can even edit them. I can not guarantee anything, because it also depends on the amount of Plugins you have, but as long as its not just less than 4 - 6MB you have left, it should work.

Conclusion and Outlook

I will analyze the memory hunger of some components and when I notice that there is something we can do about, I'm going to tackle it sooner or later.

If someone has interest to participate in the hunt for memory flaws, let me know. I hope you understand that I want to help but perhaps can not respond always in a short manner.