Category Archives: Hacking The Core

The Sky. The Universe. The Missing Unit Tests

Posted on 14 Aug 2013 by hakre

Out there in the Universe. Now comparisons get Epic Pictures when it comes to WordPress and Unit Tests: Beta Sagittae. via The Loop. Reminded me of Development By The Numbers – Slides (May 2013; by ircmaxell) having also nice comparisons … Continue reading →

Posted in Code Smells, Hacking The Core, Linked, PHP Code Smells, Pressed | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

WordPress Memory Limit fixed in 3.2

Posted on 5 May 2011 by hakre

It sounds a bit like an irony of fate: Requisite for the upcoming WordPress 3.2 release are improvements in resource usage and maintainability: Speed, Performance, less memory, better tested (WordPress 3.2, the plan: faster, lighter). And this truly is of … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

HTTP Redirect Codes (3xx) and the Location Field

Posted on 21 Mar 2011 by hakre

Over the last days some including me have opened tickets in wordpress trac touching the HTTP transport layer and redirection in specific. As with my previous HTTP related review of worpdress, this is getting more and more interesting and detailed … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

This page is a test. (Updated 1x)

Posted on 19 Mar 2011 by hakre

Clicking on the title or the Continue reading → link below will not crash the process any longer. It’s related to a segfault that can be triggered within worpdress (see #16892).

Posted in Hacking The Core | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Call_user_func_array(), PHP 5.3 and Passing by Reference

Posted on 9 Mar 2011 by hakre

Fun fact: If call_user_func_array() is used to call a function that expects a parameter passed by reference you need to pass it as a reference in the parameter array. Otherwise the callback will not be executed, call_user_func_array() will return false … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, PHP Development, Pressed | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

GPL: This Deserves a Special Mention, II

Posted on 17 Feb 2011 by hakre

A week ago I asked the wordpress project who to contact for source code, especially for those parts no source-code exists for in the zip- and tar-gz-files. You might wonder: Source for wordpress – it’s already there, right? So what … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

If you want to google up an SVN command and you type in GIT instead … you know you’ve made a switch. By #16525

Posted on 10 Feb 2011 by hakre | Leave a comment

Serialization in Options: Cant see the Wood for the Trees

Posted on 9 Feb 2011 by hakre

Last night lying in the spa when I put my book aside, it popped into my mind: We were so looking for a practicable fast and general approach to check if an option value is serialized or not in worpdress, … Continue reading →

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b2/cafelog is GPL

Posted on 3 Feb 2011 by hakre

As some of you know I’m currently in contact with Mark Jaquith, a WordPress lead developer, regarding my questions to licensing of the WordPress package. This conversation is still ongoing and started after he published an article on the WordPress … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Milestones of WordPress: Early Project Timeline (ca. 2000 to 2005)

Posted on 25 Jan 2011 by hakre

Know the roots. If you want to learn about the general development of WordPress over time and you haven’t been with the project on from it’s very beginning and before, it looks like you’ve reached the point where it’s time … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed, Reports, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

WordPress Changes GPL License Text Again

Posted on 15 Jan 2011 by hakre

Within less than a year, a wordpress core developer changed wordpress’s licensing statement again. This time it has been changed from GPL to GPL v2+. The Changeset was [17301]: WordPress contains libraries only available under the GPL v2 or later. … Continue reading →

Posted in Pressed, Reports, Uncategorized, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Akismet Introduces GPL Version to WordPress (Updated 3x)

Posted on 1 Jan 2011 by hakre

I just ran over the fact that in August 2010 Alex Shiels (tellyworth) tagged the akismet readme with “License: GPLv2”. The info left in the changelog is: * Spell out that the license is GPLv2 Well, even that this is … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kses, GPL, Copyright, Licensing and Disclaimer

Posted on 30 Dec 2010 by hakre

The current wordpress security release made me look into kses.php today. But my review ended before going over the first 10 lines already. Guess what I ran over? Jup, another wordpress GPL license violation. How did I find it? It … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed, Reports, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

WordPress Database Charset and Collation Configuration

Posted on 26 Dec 2010 by hakre

Pootzko over at this years new Q&A site for WordPress Administrators and Integrators was wondering why creating database tables via wpdb->query() / SQL didn’t reflect his worpdress collation settings. As it was not obvious for him, I thought about writing … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Hakre's Tips, Pressed, Reports | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

WordPress, Copyright, Hello Dolly Lyrics, the GNU GPL and I

Posted on 22 Dec 2010 by hakre

In the recent discussions about the Hello Dolly lyrics that are shipping with WordPress and in the plugin repository, there has been a lot of fuzz. I think it’s about time that I name why write about the issue: I’d … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

WordPress Licensing Issues – Plugins are GPL, Right?

Posted on 15 Dec 2010 by hakre

If you thought that the wordpress package you can download from wordpress.org is re-distributable under GPL, then you’re thinking wrong. Why do I say so? Thanks to a ticket opened by novasource, it came to my attention, that the Hello … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Linked, Pressed, Surviving the Internet, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Rules of Play – Faster is_serialized()

Posted on 17 Nov 2010 by hakre

It is interesting to see what happens when you throw a bunch of developers on a specific problem over time. While developing free software you can often benefit from things like code review and collective code ownership as well as … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Coding Standards that ain’t one

Posted on 2 Nov 2010 by hakre

Developer Quiz: What are coding standards that do not get applied?

Posted in Hacking The Core, PHP Development, Pressed | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

WordPress Licensing Issues – On Showing License

Posted on 6 Oct 2010 by hakre

When it comes to the GPL wordpress front-persons Jane Wells or Matt Mullenweg do not get tired to underline the importance to spread the word about software freedom. That is generally a good thing if the information provided is correct … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Pressed, Wordpress Licensing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Serialization of double values in PHP 4 and PHP 5

Posted on 23 Sep 2010 by hakre

If you want to save space in your serialized data of floating point numbers in PHP, consider to use PHP 4. Naturally that is a joke :), I just note it down here because while taking a closer look on … Continue reading →

Posted in Hacking The Core, Patched | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment