I’d intended to release this episode during the week of March 30th, days after it was recorded live at WordCamp Dallas, but problems with the recorded audio prevented doing so. The audio you’ll hear was actually ripped from the video John Pozadzides released, so thanks, John!
Joining me on the dais were Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, Mark Jaquith of b5media, later Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection, and later still, Matt Mullenweg of Automattic. Lorelle Van Fossen was nice enough to run around handing the wireless mic around so people could comment and ask questions. Subjects discussed and links to items mentioned in this episode include:

1. WordPress 2.5 had been released exactly 24 hours prior. Some people have experienced problems with IE7 and other plugins. Expect 2.5.1 within about a month.
2. Beginning with WordPress 2.2 incoming links were changed from Technorati to Google Blog Search. If you’d prefer to revert back or use some other link reporter, find the Incoming Links Box’s “Edit” link in the Dashboard and change it to the RSS feed of your choosing.
3. Issues with “disappearing plugins” relate to the plugin updater’s requirement that plugin authors build in additional functionality to work properly with the updater and submitting it to the plugin directory.
4. Mark Jaquith discusses the genesis of his Comment Inbox plugin. Lorelle chimes in with Comment Ninja, a Firefox Greasemonkey script.
5. We discussed security, including the possibility of an independent review of the core, as well as the direction themes and theme development might take in the future.
6. Matt expressed a desire for improved client-side JavaScript performance.
7. Ronald Huereca asked an interesting question about how developers might store data without creating new database tables.
8. Scott Ellis asked for examples of WordPress being used as a CMS or other unusual uses, and the panel offers up Automattic’s Publisher Blog, Trumors and 71 Miles, amongst others.
9. Rick Ankrum’s question about changes made to the default theme leads to an interesting throw-away comment by Mark Ghosh concerning a possible file integrity-checker making its way into future versions of WordPress.
10. Jill McKeever’s question about image borders and a “word wrap button” stumps the panel. (Did we ever come up with an answer for this?)
11. Someone asks about the future of Sandbox, and the possibility of incorporating its best features into the core. Several themes are discussed, including the Options theme and Regulus.
12. Matt expressed frustration with the way WordPress handles menus as static pages and sub-pages, raising the possibility of choosing which items appear in the navigation menu. Mark Jaquith brings up his Page Links To plugin which allows you to point pages and menus to links outside of your blog’s domain.
13. Matt also expressed frustration with the disparity between the image uploader and inserting an image from within the WYSIWYG editor, and brought up the possibility of an easy “image caption” function.
14. Jeff Chandler’s frustration with the perception of WordPress not being able to withstand the “Digg effect” leads to a minor debate on caching. Matt effectively debunks the issue, blaming bad server configurations and cautioning against reliance on WP-Cache and WP-Super Cache. Mark Ghosh cautions against the use of Bad Behavior for high-traffic sites.

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