I just wanted to let everyone know that the issues involved with the RSS feed have been fixed. Michael Torbert is helping me create a custom post submission form to allow me to easily take on guest blog posts. In the initial plugin, a bit of code caused the XML in the RSS feed to malfunction. This has since been fixed and I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who contacted me to let me know of the problem. Glad to see so many people reading and enjoying the feed!
People Who Rock WordPress
A new project called We Rock WordPress headed by Netizens Media aims to showcase the cream of the crop when it comes to talent in the WordPress community. Out of the 23 people on the site thus far, I have interacted or know of 18 of them. Not bad I guess. Like WPZooms 20 WordPress Rockstars post, this site showcases mugshots instead of graphics.
The site is using the recently released Gallery child theme which was built on top of the Thematic framework. Featured members have a screenshot of their site on the left hand side while on the right, a picture of the featured member along with information such as website url, Twitter ID, and an option to send the entry to Twitter. A comment form is also present to give kudos to those featured.
I think this is a good use of the gallery theme. This site actually inspired me to check and see if WPHOF.com was available as I thought of creating a WordPress Hall Of Fame but the domain has been taken. In fact, it was registered in 2005 and has been registered for a length of 10 years. Oh well, one less domain for you WordPress domain guys out their to grab. At any rate, give the site a look over.
By the way, they have a submission form if you feel someone in the WordPress community is worthy of being highlighted in the gallery. Don’t even think about submitting my name!
Are You Ready To Wpazo?
Do you even know how to pronounce the word wpazo? Try wuh PAW zo. According to the site, the word means to hit something or someone—esp. over the head—with the power of WordPress. The best WordPress stuff and a blog that hits you over the head with the good links to all the best WordPress stuff. Based on what I can tell, this is a dropping point for Ian Stewart for bookmarking and sharing cool WordPress stuff he finds across the web. Most of the content appears to have something to do with Thematic but since the site is a personal drop off point for Ian, that’s to be expected.
If Ian is your kind of guy and you enjoy the stuff he finds, you might want to add Wpazo to your feed reader. In fact, Wpazo even has a Twitter account.
We Keep Knocking Them Down
Welcome to the Friday Happy Hour. Each Friday, this post will provide a summary of what is going on within the WordPress Tavern Community. I haven’t done of these in awhile so lets see if I’m a bit rusty.
From The Forum:
The forum this week has been rather active thanks in large part to a thread I started which highlighted the fact that the guidelines for the WordPress Theme repository in as far as themes which had advertising for non-gpl themes were not being accepted were being enforced. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that thread went. If you want to chime in, you can view it here.
Ryan started a thread earlier this week asking if we had any sites hosted on WordPress.com. When you think about $15 year or so for domain mapping and $30 for no-ads, that’s a pretty sweet deal for most of what you would need to publish content on the web.
How do you know when you’re a WordPress Addict? Read the posts on the following thread to find out if you meet the criteria.
You Know You Are A WP Addict When…
Last but not least, Conorp published a thread which linked to a great article by Ozh on how to find a job with Twitter. I find Twitter to be a great place to not only help people, but to receive help as well. By the way, look at this new WordPress domain that has a pretty parking page on it. WPHire.com
Find A WordPress Job With Twitter
Accomplishments:
Oh boy, where do I begin. Since the site launched officially in March, the sites traffic has gone up, not down. RSS subscriptions continue to increase, the content keeps flowing in from not only myself, but from awesome members of the community. So instead of telling you what’s happening, I’ll try to let the images speak for themselves.
Screenshot of Woopra stats takin on May 8th
Feedburner Stats
I have Woopra on for quite a long time each day checking to see who is on the site in real-time. Often, I’ll see you publish the comment in which I’ll be able to immediately respond. That is one of the beauties of Woopra. Aside from that though, I’ve discovered that the people who are finding this site are sticking around. They are coming back multiple times per week and they are diving deep into the site. For example, I see people all the time clicking on categories to view posts or one thing I see alot of people doing is clicking on related posts which shows up in the sidebar. All are great to see if you’re a webmaster.
I would like to take this opportunity to give special thanks to Dan Cole for writing his guest post which compared three of the most popular theme frameworks. That thing has performed amazingly well and continues to do so to this day.
While recently this site has received quite a bit of traffic from Stumble Upon, the majority of social traffic comes from Twitter which is no surprise to me. But I want to thank all of you who follow the WPTavern account on twitter and for ReTweeting me every now and then. It’s pretty awesome to see a tweet spread like wildfire.
Other News And Tidbits:
So far, I’ve only had three advertisers step up to the plate to purchase advertising on the site. On the side, a few people have donated as well. If you’re interested in being in front of a passionate audience of WordPress faithful, now is a great time to make the ad buy as rates are anywhere from $25.00 – $30.00 which is pretty darn affordable if you look at the rates across the board. If you’re interested in advertising on WPTavern, check out the Advertising page to get stated.
If you don’t want to advertise but would still like to show your support through a monetary donation, you can visit the Tavern Tip Jar where any donations which are $10.00 or more you get to display a URL of your choosing on that page. Granted, it has to be safe for work.
Also, at some point or another, I will install the TDO Mini Forms plugin so it will be easier to submit guests posts to the Tavern. I’m hoping to have that installed by the end of this weekend. I’m really interested in any guest posts regarding BuddyPress, bbPress, or WordPress MU.
Conclusion:
That’s going to wrap it up for this weeks edition of the Friday Happy Hour. It’s been a busy time around these parts and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Stick around because you’ll never know what will be published next. Remember the drinks, are always on the house.
A Refreshing New Look For Darren Hoyt
Darren Hoyt who is the creator of the Mimbo Pro theme recently gave his personal site a refresh. The new look is in a word, beautiful. Everything from the colors used to the spacing to the typography looks spot on. I’m digging the slight transparency which I’ve seen few designs actually get right. I’m on the fence regarding the sideways facing Feedback button but it doesn’t bother me that much. Everything on the site just appears crisp, clean, and refreshing. Sheesh, sounds like I’m doing an advertisement for bottled water!
According to this blog post, it looks like Darren is in line for a bit of a career change by becoming a full time freelance designer. He mentions there are a few WordPress opportunities in his pipeline. Despite the career change, he plans on designing new products for his ProTheme store so not all hope is lost for those who have purchased Mimbo Pro.
The best of luck to you Darren.
WPInformer Launches – More WordPress Stuff
A few days ago, I was alerted on Twitter that a new WordPress News centric site had launched called WPInformer.com. The site was created by Aaron D Campbell and is part of the Xavisys brand. So far, there are a couple of posts on the site including a detailed look at the new widget interface that will part of WordPress 2.8, 5 minutes to improve the performance of your theme and a few others. So if you need another WordPress centric site to add you your feedreader, here it is. By the way, you can also follow WPInformer on Twitter. Good luck Aaron with the site!
WebDevStudios Introduces Support Packages
WebDevStudios headed up by Brad Williams and current sponsor of WordPress Weekly has recently announced that they now have WordPress specific support packages. The packages enable site owners to practically hire a team of people who are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week to maintain your site covering aspects from upgrading the core installation to upgrading and installing plugins.
By the way, check out the great work the company did with the redesign/relaunch Corneliamarie.com which is home to one of the fishing vessels featured in the Discovery Channels series Deadliest Catch. A great rework of the WooThemes Papercut theme.
Matt The Domain Guru Strikes Again
Near the end of episode 52 of WordPress Weekly, Ma.tt announced on the show that Automattic had finally acquired the awesome WP.com domain name from you guessed it, Yahoo!. Matt mentioned that he has been after this domain ever since the WordPress project started and Jane Wells was actually the one responsible for negotiating the deal. Rumors of the price come in at about eleventy billion dollars. People seem to believe this is a real number so I’ll keep saying it until people realize it’s a reference from a celebrity jeopardy skit on SNL.
Matt is now asking the community what it is they should do with the domain. I’ve come to the conclusion that I think they should scrap or retire the full WordPress.com domain and instead, use WP.com. So, a hosted blog would look like http://username.wp.com What a nice and short domain name. Other than doing that, I can’t think of anything they could use the domain for.
By the way, Matt mentioned in the comments that they are not pursuing the WP.org domain as they have no contact for whomever owns that domain.
As for suggestions brought up by other people, I’ve seen URL Shortening service for WordPress content, a WordPress.com only theme community, mobile version of WordPress.com blogs and a WordPress showcase. The blog post asking for suggestions has 411 responses as the comments have been closed. Most people seem to agree that it would be cool to use WP.com as a URL shortening service as well as the new domain for WordPress.com blogs. I wonder what the Automattic idea machine will crunch out.
Advertising Now An Option On WPTavern
Over this past weekend, I finally spent some time on the advertising side of things for the site. I mustered up the courage and dove right into OIO Publisher. Thankfully, this plugin made it VERY easy to create advertising zones as well as different forms of advertising. On top of that, it provides a system that makes it easy for advertisers to upload their own image and go through the display advertising purchasing process.
I’ve created the standard Advertising page which contains just about all of the information you’ll need to make your purchase. If not, get in touch with me via the contact form located at the top of this site and I’ll answer any questions you have. In total, there are four methods of display advertising to choose from with the fifth option being a combination of the podcast and the shownotes.
I know there have been a few of you interested in knowing when I would have the advertising system in place and since it’s finished, lets see if I can find a few people willing to help me keep the lights on around these parts.
Introducing The Tavern Tip Jar
Today, I’ve implemented a Tip Jar also known as donations on the site. On the right hand side under the sponsor block is a text widget with a link to the donations page. Donations is not a requirement or an obligation but I realize some folks would like to contribute to this community monetarily without necessarily purchasing ad space. There are many ways to contribute to the Tavern community that I will cover in a future post, money is only one of these ways.
For anyone that decides to donate $10.00 or more, a URL of your choosing will be displayed on the donations page for up to one month. This is my way of showing a token of appreciation along with a sincere thanks from me. The total amount a person donates will not be displayed because of the social impact that might have.
If you find this site, the forum, the overall community valuable to you in a monetary way and feel that giving a donation is the best way for you to contribute, the opportunity is now there.
If you have any questions, just leave a comment.