wip: Add converted markdown files

docs/content/_index.md

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+title = "Super-fast, easy-to-use, RSS and Atom feed parsing in PHP."
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+
+<div class="blogimage">
+
+![Standard Feed Icon](/images/feature_feed.png)
+
+</div>
+
+**_SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use feed parser, written in PHP, that puts the 'simple' back into 'really simple syndication'._** Flexible enough to suit beginners and veterans alike, SimplePie is focused on [speed, ease of use, compatibility and standards compliance](@/wiki/faq/what_is_simplepie.md).

docs/content/blog/2007-07-13-simplepie-is-going-php5-only.md

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+title = "SimplePie is going PHP5-only!"
+date = 2007-07-13T09:15:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Ryan Parman"
+cover_image = "php"
++++
+
+We’ve had this noted in our [Development Roadmap](/development/) for about 6 months now, but since many people don’t read the roadmap, I want to announce this officially: _SimplePie 1.5 will require PHP 5.2!_ There are a few reasons for this:
+
+1. **Bigger and better things:** There are lots of new things that we want to build to make SimplePie far better than it is today, but we can only do some of those things if we have a reliable codebase to build from. PHP 5.2 is that codebase. We want to be able to reliably strip out potentially dangerous tags and attributes, and we want the good tags to be whitelisted (which is much easier for all of us than the current blacklisting). We want to be able to support new and emerging technologies like [Microformats](http://microformats.org/). We want to be able to reliably shorten titles and descriptions in feeds, while maintaining HTML tags. We could either do a ton of hacking now, or we can move to a codebase that will enable us to do these things “the right way.” We’re opting for the right way.
+2. **PHP 4.x End-of-Life:** Today, the PHP team [announced the End-of-Life for PHP 4.x as of the end of the year](http://www.php.net/archive/2007.php#2007-07-13-1). They want everybody to move over to the PHP5 codebase, and what better version of PHP5 to move to than one of the more recent ones.
+3. **Go PHP5!** [GoPHP5.org](http://gophp5.org/) points out a number of things about PHP 4 and 5, specifically in the way of encouraging people to drop support for PHP 4.x so that better things can be built with PHP 5 and the upcoming PHP 6. Trying to support 2 platforms is difficult enough, but supporting 3 would be a nightmare. PHP 4.x is old, and we need to look to the future. Kinda like making the move to Web Standards for some people. It was tough to get away from those FONT tags and TABLEs for layout, but once you moved to CSS-based layouts, you realized that the doors just got blown open with all of that potential. Same thing here with us moving to PHP 5.2 and newer.
+
+We’re in the process of fixing the last few bugs in 1.0, and we’ve still got 1.1 and 1.2 releases scheduled. We don’t anticipate having SimplePie 1.5 out before the end of the year anyways, but I wanted to let you all know — several months in advance — that we’re going to be making a move, so everyone should start planning ahead for it. The stuff that we’re wanting to do, and the places we want to take this API are going to be very, very cool, and we want everybody to be able to come with us!
+
+_(One of the requirements of being listed on the GoPHP5! website is state our intention to stop supporting PHP versions less than 5.2 starting February 5th, 2008. While this hard-stop date is a bit silly, we are fully supporting the spirit of this initiative. We will not suddenly strip out support for PHP 4.x in whatever the official release is at the time, but we do expect a PHP5-only release of SimplePie 1.5 in early 2008.)_
+
+It’s a brave new world out there! 🙂

docs/content/blog/2007-07-15-geoffrey-for-hire.md

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+title = "Geoffrey for Hire!"
+date = 2007-07-15T13:45:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Ryan Parman"
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+
+Is your project in need of some help from a bona fide SimplePie expert? Of course it is! Geoffrey is your guy for hire!
+
+He is available for working remotely on a non-taxed independent contractor basis for 35 hours per week from August 6th – 19th (two weeks) for SimplePie-related work for a measly £1,000 GBP (roughly $2,000 USD) to be paid via PayPal! This is a very small investment to make for such a depth of knowledge of SimplePie, object-oriented programming in PHP, lots and lots of specification documents, and more! Specific details and expectations can be worked out by contacting him via email at <[email protected]> (though he’ll likely be unavailable from July 19th ? 31st).
+
+Do you have a pet bug that needs to be fixed? Are there features that you’re tired of waiting for that you’d like to have sooner? Now is your chance to make those things happen much faster! Do your SimplePie-related project a favor and hire the best there is!

docs/content/blog/2007-12-28-byepie.md

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+title = "ByePie"
+date = 2007-12-28T15:23:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Geoffrey Sneddon"
+chunky = true
++++
+
+<div id="post-91" class="chunk">
+
+<div lang="en-gb-x-sneddy">
+
+Having put a lot of thought into the matter over the past several weeks, I’ve made my decision to leave development of SimplePie.
+
+“Why!? Oh Why!?”, you scream (well, maybe not, but I’m not a telepathic seer). For a start, I haven’t actually really used SimplePie myself since early 2006 (now almost two years ago), and I now have less and less to do with PHP at all (and I totally hate it ? a recent bug in SP was caused by the fact that “0” == false ? and have therefore moved to (mainly) Python).
+
+Furthermore, over the past year, since March/April, my time has become increasingly limited, and SP has _de-facto_ been one of the things that I have cut a long time ago (the reason for the lack of commits from me much) ? the majority of my time is now spent on schoolwork, with what is left over being spent working on various specs (predominantly HTML 5 and Tolerant HTTP Parsing).
+
+However, what does the future of SP hold? Well, various decisions need to be made about the future direction ? do you try and improve 1.x further (it was already stretched to breaking point at 1.0, mainly held back by PHP itself ? a sad state to be in), or do you start on the vision of SP2? To take the former option, I doubt you could get much further than what is currently planned for 1.2 with the current 1.x base ? any further development requires a large amount of reworking the internals of SP (to the extreme of being questionable about whether there is any point of not starting from scratch). The latter option is probably the best (though ideally get 1.1 out as soon as it can be).
+
+One of the aims of SP2 is true modularity ? it should be possible to use (and load) nothing more the parser itself (i.e., give it raw XML data, and it gives you an API to access the title, description, etc. as they are in the feed without sanitising them at all) ? which has several advantages for deciding any successor to myself: get people to write various modules for it against pre-existing specs (most of which are only drafts and so will need further development over time). What exactly those modules will be I am mainly undecided (though it won’t, I assure you, be the more complex parts of the API itself ? the design of them is mainly unwritten and comes from knowledge of successes/failures from SP1’s API). I will myself continue maintaining a couple of the modules (namely, the Unicode and IRI ones, both of which I use outwith of SP ? though more may be added to that list).
+
+I’m more than willing to be around in a consulting role for a while ? my contact details are in the footer of [my site](http://gsnedders.com/), and I’ll stay around in the [IRC channel](irc://irc.freenode.net/simplepie) for a while ? as well as helping people around the SP1 codebase (though I’d like to see that totally feature frozen come the end of January, with a final non-bugfix release from it in February) ? which is horrifically uncommented in parts, and uses stupidly complex algorithms in others that without prior knowledge of them make no sense (I’ve had issues with some myself when coming back to them having not touched them in a while 🙂 ).
+
+Alas, there’s too much to write about the vision of SP2, so that will have to be done in another post; until then, g’nite.
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div id="comment-9041" class="pingback even thread-even depth-1 chunk pingback">
+
+Pingback: <a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/01/01/simplepie-almost-dies/" class="url" rel="external nofollow">Weblog Tools Collection » Blog Archive » SimplePie Almost Dies</a>
+
+</div>

docs/content/blog/2008-01-02-simplepie-11-is-now-available.md

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+title = "SimplePie 1.1 is now available!"
+date = 2008-01-02T16:02:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Ryan Parman"
+cover_image = "simplepie"
++++
+
+[SimplePie 1.1 is now available.](downloads/index.html) This release adds some features that we’d wanted to put into 1.0, but didn’t have the time to. It also squashes lots of miscellaneous bugs. This release is API-compatible with previous 1.0.x releases, so it should be as simple as a drop-in replacement. Feel free to check out the [release notes](wiki/misc/release_notes/simplepie_1.1) for more details.
+
+It should also be noted that PHP 4.x has been officially end-of-life’d, so as per [previous discussion on the topic](2007/07/13/simplepie-is-going-php5-only/index.html), we’ll be phasing out PHP 4 support over the next release or two, and we’ll be nudging all of you still on PHP 4 to either upgrade to PHP 5 or change hosts (shameless plug: sign up for [Dreamhost](http://dreamhost.com/r.cgi?skyzyx) with the `SIMPLEPIE` promo code, and get $20 USD off the 1-year plan).
+
+We’re also looking at a much shorter schedule for the 1.2 release. In the meantime, if you’re interested in helping develop SimplePie as Geoffrey begins to transition off the project, please get in touch ASAP so we can begin getting you up-to-speed and working out the details.
+
+**Update:** We’re keeping track of [known issues](wiki/misc/release_notes/simplepie_1.1#known_issues), if you want to see the list.

docs/content/blog/2008-01-15-sp2-the-vision.md

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+title = "SP2: The Vision"
+date = 2008-01-15T08:29:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Geoffrey Sneddon"
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+
+I’m sure that many of you will have by now heard me talking about SP2, whether in the context of how PHP4 is holding us back, or why SimplePie lacks modularity. But what is the idea of SP2? What will it actually have?
+
+- **Modularity**: I made brief mention of this in my previous post, but to go into more detail here: have each and every process in SimplePie properly seperated out (the main reason why this is not the case in SimplePie 1 is that it was never foreseen that we’d ever be trying to parse documents multiple times, or with different parsers. SimplePie 1’s design would make it hard to use different classes for different data formats (be it RSS or Atom feeds; or Atom feed or Atom entry ? the reason why we don’t support Atom entry documents). SimplePie 1 is hacked together in all sorts of places to try and get around limitations caused by this lack of modularity ? the entire options system is a good example (which, ideally, would be on a seperate object that could just be passed around by reference).
+- **Expandability**: Adding anything to SimplePie 1 is very complex, in part due to the insane number of circular dependancies within the code-base. It is also difficult to add implementation specific functionality into SimplePie itself, as the only solution is to override classes/methods, which are often very large on their own. A likely solution to this would be some sort of plugin system.
+- **Resource Efficiency**: While any feature will have a computational cost, this cost should be kept to the minimum possible. This should mean caching as much data as possible, as processed as possible.
+
+##### Implementation
+
+A question just a vital as what to actually have is how to implement it ? I would like to propose to have a core that did nothing but call plugins ? a core that was nothing more than a framework to call everything else. The details of the implementation will undoubtedly need to be very well thought out to overcome the short-comings of SimplePie 1 (for example, preferring content from an RSS element in an RSS feed ? something more complex than you might expect to implement if you want to avoid duplicating vast amounts of code). The modularity will also allow the parser to be truly used on its own, something that could never be done with SimplePie 1.
+
+The details of the implementation inevitably run on to the question of _who_ is going to implement it ? because of the modularity there is far less need for a single person to deal with a monolithic beast (like SimplePie 1), and different people can work on different parts. I, myself, will likely keep up the [XML5](http://annevankesteren.nl/2007/10/xml5) and [HTML5](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/) parsers, as well as Unicode (including decoding non-Unicode formats) and IRI support (which will probably just map IRIs to URIs on PHP5, and store IRIs natively on PHP6). This means that undertaking any work on SP2 doesn’t mean making such a big commitment as that of undertaking any work on SimplePie 1 (though, inevitably, help with the either is warmly welcomed).
+
+##### My Involvement
+
+A lot of people have questioned what exactly my role will be within SimplePie, and part of the issue was some of the finer details weren’t finalised as of my previous post. So:
+
+- **SimplePie 1** maintenance was taken over by Ryan following the release of SimplePie 1.1, though there will likely be a second developer leading development of SimplePie 1. I, myself, will continue to make occasional small bug-fixes, though little more (as the case has been for several months now).
+- **SP2** will initially be developed by me, though I expect to leave the role of lead developer after the core is done (though it will not have reached feature-parity with SimplePie 1). SP2 will be developed from a [distributed version control system](http://betterexplained.com/articles/intro-to-distributed-version-control-illustrated/) ? most likely [Mercurial](http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/), though [git](http://git.or.cz/) is also an option if people would prefer to use that. The current intention is that I will maintain the authoritative tree while all my minions do the coding for me.

docs/content/blog/2008-01-17-simplereader-mobile-and-iphoneipod-touch-update.md

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+title = "SimpleReader Mobile and iPhone/iPod touch update"
+date = 2008-01-17T00:16:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Ryan Parman"
++++
+
+We’ve made some minor updates to [SimpleReader Mobile](http://m.simplepie.org) for iPhone/iPod touch users.
+
+1. iPod touch now gets the fancy iPhone view.
+2. Now that the latest firmware update (1.1.3) allows iPhone and iPod touch users to add websites to their home screen, we’ve added the blue SimpleReader logo as the default icon so it looks nice. This particular feature hasn’t yet been tested as I don’t have my wife’s iPhone on-hand to test with, but I’ve followed Apple’s documentation, so I’m assuming it’s right. If not, I’ll have it fixed as soon as I can get my hands on her iPhone.
+
+That is all. 🙂

docs/content/blog/2008-01-31-moving-the-simplepie-support-forums.md

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+title = "Moving the SimplePie support forums"
+date = 2008-01-31T11:24:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Ryan Parman"
++++
+
+In the last post, I talked a little about transition. SimplePie is growing, and is the most popular it has ever been! This means two things:
+
+1. We’ve got to keep building the best RSS/Atom software available for PHP (and AJAX, and Mobile, and WordPress), and…
+2. We’ve got a LOT of users to support, with a LOT of questions to answer.
+
+Personally, I’m currently in the process of wrapping up some work with the Yahoo! Messenger web team, and then ramping up fast on my company’s WarpShare project to try to have a technology preview ready in time for [South by Southwest: Interactive](http://2008.sxsw.com/). I’ve been swamped for the last two weeks, then I open up my feed reader this morning, and there are over 70 new SimplePie support requests. Quite frankly, I can’t keep up.
+
+I’ve already reached a point where I’m barely able to do any development on SimplePie because of all of the support and maintenance I’ve been doing, and I really want to get back to developing more. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours writing tutorials, FAQs, documentation, and example code. We moved all of our docs over to a wiki so that the community could more effectively contribute. I know that some of you help answer questions for others, and that’s appreciated more than you know. But as a whole, I don’t know if anyone but the development team is subscribed to the RSS feeds for the forum, and can help answer questions more effectively. And I can’t keep taking on this kind of load primarily by myself.
+
+So… in an effort to more effectively push support into the hands of those who are capable of helping, I’m going to begin the process of shutting down new registrations and posts on the existing support forum (thereby turning it into an archive), and opening up a new [Yahoo! Groups mailing list/forum](http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/simplepie-support/). Yahoo! Groups is pretty good, they’ve got a web-based forum-like view, but most importantly they’ve got mailing list support.
+
+In my experience, those who are subscribed to a mailing list are able to get more information, and are more capable of contributing to the discussions. And that’s what we want: more people contributing to the discussions.
+
+Again my schedule is a bit jumbled right now, so this will probably happen sometime over the next few weeks, but it’s coming. By spreading the SimplePie support load more effectively, we’ll have one more developer who can devote more time to improving SimplePie… and really, I think that’s what we all want. 🙂

docs/content/blog/2008-01-31-welcome-steve-minutillo.md

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+title = "Welcome Steve Minutillo!"
+date = 2008-01-31T11:04:00Z
+
+[extra]
+author = "Ryan Parman"
++++
+
+As I’m sure you’re aware by now, SimplePie is in a bit of a transition. The project is growing, and we’re up to 4 public products right now (SimplePie, SimplePie Live!, SimplePie for WordPress, and SimpleReader Mobile), we’ve got a good product in SimplePie 1.1, and we’ve got our sights set on SimplePie 2.
+
+As we’ve previously discussed, we’re looking for some new development help. Particularly, people who can help us grow toward our vision — not people who want to maintain old PHP 4.x releases after we’ve moved to pure PHP5. The first person to come to mind when we started looking was Steve Minutillo.
+
+Steve is the developer of a web-based feed aggregator called [Feed on Feeds](http://feedonfeeds.com/) that is currently based on SimplePie, so he has experience in using SimplePie for complex projects. Steve has been a very valuable patch contributor up to this point, and he accepted our invitation to join the SimplePie development team.
+
+We’re still looking for a few more developers to help us grow this project out more. Particularly if you’ve got experience with PHP, RSS/Atom, mobile apps, JSON web service APIs, and the like, we’d love to have you on our team. The best way for us to notice you is to provide detailed bug reports with patches, so if you’re itching to get more involved in your spare time as a contributor/developer, this is the way to do it.
+
+Please take a moment to welcome Steve to the SimplePie team! 🙂