The other day, I received some bum news regarding the affiliate program for the book, Digging Into WordPress by Jeff Starr and Chris Coyier. Thanks to the abuse of their affiliate system with no concrete way to battle the abuse, they have decided to phase out the program for the time being. Here is the official email sent out to members:
The important details:
- We’re turning it off this Monday at Noon EST. You are of course free to remove all links as you wish.
- We don’t benefit in any way from links left up. (It’s not a ploy for us to benefit from lingering links)
- We’re sorry =( We thought long and hard about it and we think this is our best option.
Here’s the scoop:
We’ve had a ton of fraud go through the affiliate program. A bad guy can sign up for the program and buy a bunch of books from us with stolen credit cards, and earn money. It’s extremely difficult to catch, because the people with the fraudulent charge may not even notice, or not notice for months. Meanwhile we’ve already given the bad guy money. The negative effects of this being:
- We lose money
- Our PayPal account is at serious risk of closure
- We facilitate bad things happening to people
Unfortunately the software we use to handle the affiliate program just isn’t up to the task of fighting this. So to all: THANK YOU for being an affiliate. The book has been a success in no small part because of you. If we can figure out a better way to handle this, we’ll do that and open it back up. In the mean time, if you are looking for other affiliate programs to try out, check this one out:
-Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr
Digging Into WordPress
http://digwp.com
That sucks but I’ll still be keeping the link to the book on the WPTavern store because it’s a great resource that takes things a step further after WordPress For Beginners.
Thanks to a recent upgrade to the advertising management system I use, I’m now able to create and offer coupons to advertisers. I’m working my way back into generating a consistent stream of content on the site and to get things back in gear, I’m offering a coupon code for advertisers that will save them 25% on the following ad zones, Site Header, Site Sidebar and Forum Header. After your display ad has been approved, enter the following coupon code into the coupon box, 25PERCENT as this will deduct the cost immediately. The coupon is good for any length of purchase e.g. 30,60, or 90 days. This coupon code will expire on Friday, March 11th.
Here is something to consider. The money I make at the grocery store during the week is being put away for a desperately needed new roof and the money I generate from WPTavern.com is what will keep me fed as well as pay for minimal expenses. Needless to say, I definitely have an incentive to keep things going around here.
ADVERTISER TIP: Based on experience, users are more likely to both click and spend their money if the display banner offers a coupon code to save a percentage of money.
After all the hoopla surrounding the addition of the admin bar which is enabled by default within WordPress 3.1, I’m wondering how many of you have actually gone through and removed or disabled this particular feature? If you kept the admin bar but have used a plugin or custom code to hide it until your mouse cursor is over the area, select the third option. This is an in-between method that keeps the admin bar out of sight until needed.
As for myself, I’ve found the admin bar to be very convenient especially as it relates to comments as the link takes me straight to the comment moderation queue. Also, instead of logging into the site and browsing to the new post section, I’ve been selecting the Add New post link within the admin bar. The only thing I don’t like about it is the color but that can be easily corrected.
While not directly related to the poll question, how many of you have actually added additional functionality to the admin bar in the form of links or something else?
There is an interesting discussion taking place on the Make WordPress Themes site which is the home to the theme review team regarding jQuery and themes. There are three points that are being discussed:
The first point for discussion is that Themes should always use the current version of jQuery as bundled with WordPress, so as to avoid core/Plugin breakage due to an unexpected version (whether older or newer than the WordPress-bundled version).
The second point for consideration is that, if Themes should always use the current version of jQuery as bundled with WordPress, then Themes should not bundle their own version of jQuery, and should instead enqueue the core-bundled version, via wp_enqueue_script( ‘jquery’ ).
The third – and likely, most controversial – point for discussion is that Themes should not deregister the core-bundled jQuery, in order to register a CDN-hosted, minified version of jQuery, as such functionality is better-left to the end user, via Plugin.
While I don’t personally have any thoughts on any of the topics discussed, I figured most people may not keep an eye on this particular site so I needed to spread the word.
Hugo Baeta who has become one of the newest members of the Automattic team has showcased his love for WordPress by getting two tattoos on his body. The first tattoo which shows the WordPress W with what seems like vines around the circle. All in all, it looks pretty good, especially the straight lines in the W.
WordPress On The Shoulder
The second tattoo is the motto of WordPress spread across the forearm. Once again, the detail is pretty good as it looks like a stencil was used. Congrats to Hugo on his new job, I just hope his feelings for WordPress are for life and not just a spur of the moment thing. Also, I wonder if the WordPress Foundation gave him permission to put the trademark onto his body? I ask that question jokingly.
Some folks in the WordPress community were bummed when they found out that Alex King, the guy behind Crowd Favorite announced that he was going to shut down his side project, WordPress HelpCenter because it never gained the traction with developers that Alex was aiming for. This also provided Alex more of an opportunity to concentrate on CrowdFavorite.
WP Help Center Reopens March 14th
As you can see from the image above, the WordPress HelpCenter will be opening its doors again on March 14th under new management. Nathan Garza who has worked with Crowd Favorite will be the new owner of the Help Center while Alex King will be affiliated with the site by being on the board of advisers. Alex states that he won’t be involved in the day-to-day operations of the site and hopes that his experience will be useful for Nathan.
If you used the WordPress HelpCenter in the past, keep an eye out for the reopening as there is a possibility that the business will be structured differently than it’s initial offering.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I shared a couple pieces of information such as the WordPress Weekly podcast has now been properly archived within the WPWeekly category here on WPTavern. I also explained what I’ve been up to regarding the Tavern forum as well as some miscellaneous stuff. After discussing some news stories during the week, I interviewed Lance Willett (@simpledream on Twitter) who is head of the theme wrangler team for Automattic to not only talk about themes in general, but the big news concerning commercial themes now available for WordPress.com users. There interview went off very well and I’m grateful Lance could spend part of his weekend with me.
P.S. Check out the newly designed ThemeShaper.com, the main site for the Automattic Theme Wranglers.
Ad Copy:
This episode of WordPress Weekly is sponsored by WebDevStudios.com more specifically, their awesome collaboration plugin called CollabPress. CollabPress is a project and task management plugin that transforms WordPress into powerful collaboration software with the abilities to assign due dates, unlimited project, task list, and task creation, the ability to use built-in WordPress accounts and much more. CollabPress is guaranteed to work on WordPress 3.1 and is compatible with Multi-Site as well. If you run into any issues, there is a support forum dedicated solely to the plugin that is free for public use. You can find more information about this plugin at collabpress.org.
WooThemes has published the 5th iteration of their comic, WooVille. This time they have taken the WordPress themeing community and transformed it into a cool comic. It took me a little while but I eventually discovered the Woo Ninja who was cleverly in disguise with his surroundings. However, as was shared earlier in the week, this particular part of the image is my favorite and the most humorous.
Guess Who
It shouldn’t take anyone more than 10 seconds to realize who that person is although the illustration certainly shows a different captain biceps that I know. Also of humorous note is that Matt Mullenweg is up in the air in a helicopter overseeing all of the theme companies. I wonder if that chopper is loaded with lawyer cannons for anyone that wants to go the opposite way of the GPL. I’m joking of course but it’s funny to think of lawyers being shot out of a cannon anyways.
Well, here is something you don’t get to read every day. Byrne Reese who was the former product manager of Movable Type and TypePad as well as an employee of Six Apart from 2004-2008 wrote a great article outlining the various facets that have contributed to the success of WordPress. It’s a great post because it comes from someone that was in the trenches for the competition.
I’ve been involved in the WordPress community since 2007 but in reading the Codex as well as various articles from the past, it seemed as though one of the biggest reasons that WordPress was able to generate a strong nucleus of developers and an exponentially growing user base was because of the licensing fiasco that took place in 2004. It was one of those events in time that if it didn’t happen, who knows if WordPress would still be in existence today. Since then, WordPress has become the cream of the crop for web publishing. However, the article is a good read because of the insights that are learned from the mistakes that were made by Six Apart which played a role in their demise as a market leader.
I also recommend reading Mark Jaquiths comment on the post as he said something that I think more people need to realize.
It is worth distinguishing between Automattic/WordPress.com vs. Six Apart and WordPress/WordPress.org vs. Movable Type. Movable Type is a Six Apart product, but WordPress is not an Automattic product. It is an independent project that Automattic contributes to. But the community is much bigger than that (take me, for example, an independent). The rivalry between Six Apart and Automattic is a run-of-the-mill business rivalry, and one I’m glad I could sit out. The rivalry between Movable Type and WordPress was different. It was about a product versus a project.
Remember, at the end of the day, choose and use the best publishing system for the job. WordPress can do many things but it can’t do everything which is why it’s great to know there are alternatives available.
WordPress 3.0.5 was released the other day to address a couple of issues dealing with security and untrusted user accounts. While those issues were addressed, it was soon discovered that one of the security fixes for 3.0.5 created another problem of stripping HTML on display from people with the unfiltered_html capability. Instead of fixing that minor problem and releasing 3.0.6 which would have been embarrassing to say the least, a hot fix was applied to the latest version of Akismet which was also due for an upgrade. This solved the problem for at least a few users but not everyone.
Mark Jaquith then created a plug in which contains the hot-fix but also mentioned that the plug in could be used in the future to fix selected bugs as well. If a number of WordPress powered sites would have this plug in installed, it would be a handy way of pushing out fixes.
I’m not quite sure I understand the reasoning behind this. 3.1 is right around the corner and that branch already has the fix applied while those who know how can simply update their sites via SVN through the nightly builds. In the comments, Ozh also raises a good point in that how do you explain the difference between a hot fix versus an update for WordPress? It’s an unnecessary process that I don’t want to go through. There was also the suggestion of perhaps bundling the Hotfix plug in with WordPress like Hello Dolly or Akismet which is a bad idea. There is a strong contingent of people (I’m one of them) working hard to try and de-couple Hello Dolly and Akismet from the core package of WordPress and the last thing we need is yet another bundled plug in with core.
The best recommendation came from Andrew Nacin in the comments of strengthening the update procedures of WordPress. By the way, one tidbit of information to keep in mind throughout all of this is that somewhere around WordPress 3.2, the goal is to stop updating over the wp-content directory which I know will make some people happy.
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In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I shared a couple pieces of information such as the WordPress Weekly podcast has now been properly archived within the WPWeekly category here on WPTavern. I also explained what I’ve been up to regarding the Tavern forum as well as some miscellaneous stuff. After discussing some news stories during the week, I interviewed 
