By Jeffro on June 8, 2011
Long time no see. Last time we talked, I announced that I’d be stepping away and selling off everything I accomplished with this site and the podcast. I’m happy to report that not only have I sold the content I generated to an awesome buyer, they have requested that I continue about my business with WPTavern, the forum and the podcast as if nothing has happened. The only distinct change that has happened and will be the only thing to happen for the foreseeable future is that the site will be owned by someone else. I am in charge of maintaining and operating the site as I normally would. At the request of the new owner, the terms of the deal as well as who the new owner is is under wraps.
So what this means is that I’ll be re-opening the forum as well as upgrading it to get it going again. I’ll also be conducting an episode or two of WordPress Weekly in the near future and I’ll be writing about WordPress again here on the site. I’m sticking around without any influence by the new owner as to what to write, say, or do. In all honesty, it’s a pretty weird deal on paper but it’s a deal that’s allowed me the greatest flexibility as well as allowing me to fulfill a couple of financial obligations that sprang up. For instance, I was recently able to put money down on a used truck. You don’t know how much you need a truck until you become a home owner!
There is one change that I’ll be making. Thanks to the deal, I’m going to remove all display advertising from the site and will not need to pursue affiliate links in future reviews I do. While any additional income is great, writing without the weight of needing money is actually a huge weight off my shoulders.
Before we get back to regular programming around here, I want to thank all of you for your comments on my good bye post. It became obvious that the audience of WPTavern values my work much more than I do. So many of you wanted me to stick around in some form or fashion while many of you were pretty darn sad to see WPWeekly to go by the wayside. It’s comments like those that convinced me of negotiating a deal that allowed me to stay on and manage the site.
I’m not guaranteeing that I’ll be publishing posts or that I’ll be active in the forum every day or producing a podcast every weekend but I am guaranteeing that I’ll be behind the bar, taking your orders and continuing to talk about this thing called WordPress which is pretty cool publishing software.
Posted in News | Tagged community, wordpress, wptavern |
By Jeffro on May 17, 2011
A lot has happened in the 2 and a half years since WPTavern began. In fact, a lot has happened since I started my first paid writing gig for WeblogToolsCollection.com back in December of 2007. Back then, I was infected with the WordPress fascination bug. I wanted to write, read, and learn what I could concerning the publishing system. My enthusiasm showed up in my posts and I was not afraid to write about what was on my mind versus towing any line. Unlike most of the people within the WordPress ecosystem who are developer centric, I had the ability to write well about WordPress as an end user with little to no development experience. Over the course of time, I think my ideas, criticisms and suggestions have helped in one way or another either the WordPress platform or a theme or plugin author. However, since my biggest contributions to the project have really only been words, maybe I haven’t done anything to improve the CMS as it relies on code. Regardless of my contributions or lack thereof, my goal was to always try and tell the stories of those making things happen which is a gift I don’t have. I’m a user, not a creator.
Thanks to this thing called WordPress and my enthusiasm for not only the platform, but for the people and community that surrounds it, I was able to travel to various parts of the country to attend WordCamps, local events dedicated to bring WordPress users together. I was able to meet and talk face to face with many of the people that have online celebrity status attached to them and found out most of them are down to earth people. I was able to transform myself from a nobody blogger in Northern Ohio to someone who actually could write a thing or two about WordPress. One of my biggest accomplishments though was being able to turn WPTavern into a respected community within the grander ecosystem that is WordPress. Those who registered to the forum and have spent hours on it responding to or creating threads of their own are the ones to thank for that.
One of my other goals for this site that sort have happened, at least for one year was to generate an income that would allow me to do this full-time. I was on a roll before my fiances father passed away, creating a mudslide of responsibilities and problems that fell into our laps. One year, I was able to generate $10,000 of additional income but to get there, I had to spend 7-9 hours in front of the computer interacting with the community, writing content such as extensive reviews with affiliate links, produce the WordPress weekly podcast on a regular basis on the week-end, essentially be everywhere the news was happening. Once life got in the way of me being able to sit in front of the PC all day, everything started to crumble apart.
The bottom line is, writing about WordPress, being a user and not a creator is not something that is going to put food on the table and is definitely not going to pay for things such as a new roof, driveway, windows, etc. It could certainly be used for supplemental income but I just don’t have the energy or will power to keep trudging through the waste deep mud. I need to be thinking about what I can do to get a career in something that will help pay for this stuff that exists in the real world, not the WordPress world. A job or education to get a job that will help sustain my way of life. Recently, I’ve been thinking about taking a general tradesman certificate course at a local college to see what that’s all about.
So what that all means is that my time with WPTavern and everything that I’ve done in the WordPress world is coming to an end. However, it’s not the end of WPTavern or the things attached to it. You’ll find out what’s happening when the time is right but the future is still bright for this domain and everything attached to it.
If you’re interested in keep tabs on me, you can follow me at http://jeffc.me/
Posted in News | Tagged bye bye, thanks, wordpress |
By Jeffro on April 5, 2011
In a interesting business move by WooThemes, the commercial theme company has announced that they will be re-focusing their efforts to be a WordPress centric theme company, again. Another example as to how time flies, it wasn’t too long ago when WooThemes began releasing themes for Expression Engine, Tumblr, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento. This was a move to diversify their business and expand into different markets but after a year into the experiment, it turns out that there is more to it than cranking out themes.
- We have no knowledge of these platforms, which meant we had to partner with collaborative developers to help us expand onto these other CMS’s. We luckily found brilliant partners passionate and committed to their niche CMS strengths. Collaborations have their own little intricacies and our experience with these platforms & development processes was just never the same, as it was with WP.
- We realized that we had no knowledge of these communities, which meant that it was hard for ourselves to get a firm foothold there. Our roots are firmly in the WP community and as a result we always tried to replicate our WP ideas in these other communities, but we eventually realized that we had to tailor our approaches accordingly. The decision to focus our attention on WP instead is simply due to team capacity, budgets & priorities.
- In our hearts, and without trying to step on anyone’s feet, we could never get as excited about a new Drupal or EE theme in the same way we do before every WP release. Passion is always important.
It’s great to see that WooThemes is taking measures to ensure that their non WordPress platform customers will be taken care of by the end of April. So is it a risky move by WooThemes to reorganize into a one platform theme company again? Of course, but it’s not like WordPress is going any where and it doesn’t seem to be crumbling down anytime soon. How long WordPress continues to be king of the hill remains to be seen but I’d venture to guess it will be at least a couple more years. Hopefully longer.
Posted in News | Tagged commercial, drupal, woothemes, wordpress
By Jeffro on March 16, 2011
Version 2.7 of the WordPress for iPhone app has been released to the App Store. In this version, there have been over 100 bug fixes which should help alleviate crashes and increase stability. The development blog states 2.7 is more of a performance and stability update rather than a feature upgrade.
The main focus of this release is to improve the app’s performance and reliability. The app has been moved to Core Data, which is a much improved way of managing information locally on the device. Also, the methods used to communicate over XML-RPC have been updated to better handle communication issues and increase reliability of the app. In total there have been 117 changes in this release.
Besides the bug fixes, the UI for the Post editor has been revamped to make it easier to write and edit posts. The question I have and I know many others are wondering the same thing is when will Post Format support be added?
Posted in News | Tagged app, apple, iphone, wordpress
By Jeffro on March 13, 2011
Earlier today, there was a new section of the WordPress.org forums created specifically for meetups. In the announcement post, Jane Wells explained what the purpose of the forum was.
This forum is the first step toward WordPress.org helping to facilitate local WordPress meetups. Some meetups are specific to skill/interest (users, developers, theme designers, etc) while others are general interest groups that touch on all topics around publishing with and developing for WordPress.
We’ll be rolling out features on this site over the coming year to help support these groups, but in the meantime, we hope this forum will provide an easier way to find like minded WordPress friends and collaborators in your area.
If you’re an organizer of a WordPress specific meetup, this is an excellent opportunity for you to spread the word. Although the service is not free for organizers, you can see if there is a meetup in your area by visiting WordPress.meetup.com which is what I used to find a few meetups near me.
Speaking of meetups, there is one coming up for the Northeast Ohio area on March 24th that will go in depth on WordPress 3.1.
Posted in News | Tagged community, local, meetups, wordpress |
By Jeffro on March 11, 2011
Just a few days ago, Automattic launched a new plugin pack called Jetpack which takes some of the best features of WordPress.com and puts them into plugin form to be used on self hosted WordPress sites. Today, Automattic announced that they are now offering a Guided Transfer service which will enable WordPress.com users to easily migrate to a self hosted WordPress install on a WordPress.org recommend host.
When I first saw the news, I didn’t think any people would be buying such a service considering most of what needs to be transferred between the two is content and that is easily done via the WordPress XML file. However, after giving it some thought, I realized that the user base on WordPress.com is mostly made up of people who either don’t want the hassle of maintaining their site or do not have the technical skills to do so. So after spending some time on WordPress.com and feeling comfortable with the software, I can see how someone would pay $99.00 for the convenience and satisfaction of having their hand held for two weeks so they can keep on publishing content without worrying about all the technical fuss to get things situated.
I’m not quite sure why GoDaddy and Network Solutions are among the list of recommended webhosts considering I hear nothing but bad things about GoDaddys setup. Meanwhile, Network Solutions definitely didn’t have the best of years as it relates to WordPress. I know webhosting companies make mistakes but the mistakes that were made by some of the webhosts that are being recommend were rookie mistakes at best dealing with permission issues. One has to think if some of the webhosts being recommended are purely because of they payout based on affiliate or referrals. The reputation of WordPress is on the line so to speak if those webhosts don’t deliver. Then again, some of the hosts have been recommended by WordPress for years as they’ve gone through a series of problems.
It’s too bad HostGator was not added to the list. Ever since I switched to them early in 2010, I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the company ranging from up time to their support. They are big fans of WordPress and do a good job of keeping their customers informed as to what’s going on within the company. So while HostGator doesn’t make their list, I can say that I fully recommend them for your hosting needs.
Posted in News | Tagged automattic, revenue, services, transfers |
By Jeffro on March 9, 2011
John Battelle who is behind BattelleMedia is in the unique position to interview Matt Mullenweg not once, but twice this week. The first interview will take place at Signal Austin while the second will be an onstage conversation at South by Southwest discussing the Future Of WordPress. John is asking for people to submit questions for both interviews.
One of the thought provoking questions I would ask is what he thinks about WordPress without him. It’s a question that is possibly impossible for him to answer but I would like to hear his thoughts on which direction he would want WordPress and the non-profit foundation to head if he were to disappear.
The second question which probably wouldn’t be of interest to anyone in the audience is whether Matt actually has any time to just think and reflect about where he’s been and where he wants to go along with the project. I would like him to describe those times of reflection and then talk about the short term and long term future of both Automattic the company as well as the non-profit foundation. While he doesn’t have a crystal ball, I imagine he has plans and goals for 2011 and possibly for 2012. I’d like to know what those are.
I’m just glad they don’t have me on stage interviewing Matt or having a conversation with him because I’d never stop asking questions. That reminds me, it’s about time I have him on the show again.
Posted in News | Tagged interview, matt, questions, sxsw
By Jeffro on March 9, 2011
This is the moment every VideoPress user has been waiting for. On March 9th, it was announced on the official VideoPress blog that the service now supports the HTML 5 video format.
VideoPress now supports HTML5 < video > playback in supporting browsers without Flash playback support. Low-power devices such as smartphones can now play MP4 (H.264 video, AAC audio) and Ogg (Theora video, Vorbis audio) content natively in the browser. VideoPress also supports Apple’s AirPlay streaming technology to share video between supporting locally networked devices such as iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV. Videos with associated transcripts, such as WordPress TV, include WebVTT < track > data for display by supporting browsers.
This is great news for videos uploaded to the service from now on but unfortunately, it doesn’t look like videos uploaded before March 9th will be able to be viewed by an iPhone since those have already been encoded. (I’ve been informed that the HTML 5 changes only apply to WordPress.com hosted videos and not to the VideoPress plugin for self installed WordPress sites. I hope it comes down the pike though.) It would be cool to see an option to re-encode the videos so that HTML 5 support could be added.
Posted in News | Tagged flash, html, Video, videopress |
By Jeffro on March 8, 2011
“For those following along at home, we’re now powered by 152 physical processors, 511 gigabytes of memory (RAM), 174 hard disks with several terabytes of storage, and we’re adding new servers constantly.”
That last part about “adding new servers” was especially true, for WP.com we’re now at 8,921 CPU cores across 2,475 physical processors, 8,200 gigabytes of memory (RAM). We’ve changed how we’ve done storage, but now that layer includes on its own 1.3 terabytes of RAM, 1.3 petabytes of storage, and 8.9 terabytes of solid state disks. (Plus Amazon S3, which we use as backup to our internal systems.) Also, we’re adding new servers constantly.
Quoted From – Some Turbulence
The time span between then and now is about 4 years. I’m sure Automattic has help with regards to managing all that hardware but I wonder how Barry does it and how much of the hardware load he has to worry about?
Posted in News | Tagged cpus, hardware, servers, wordpress.com
By Jeffro on March 7, 2011
Congrats to Brian Gardner and the StudioPress team for having their Pretty Young Thing theme added to the commercial offering on WordPress.com. The second theme from WooThemes called Crisp has also been added. Not to be outdone, The Theme Foundry also has two themes now available, the second being The Traction Theme. Interesting to note that Pretty Young Thing is a child theme based on the Genesis Framework which is also in use with this theme.
Posted in News | Tagged studiopress, woothemes, wordpress.com |
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