In this interview, Leland who operates ThemeLab.com tells us what he’s been up to, what it’s been like to attend a WordCamp for the first time, and he also gives us some information regarding his underground project. I enjoyed getting to meet Leland face to face and hope I get the chance to meet up with him again soon at another WordCamp. Oh, the cookies were pretty awesome.
*Note* You may need to turn your volume to full blast to hear both myself and Leland. Lesson learned. No more outside interviews with the Flip.
In this interview with Dave Moyer conducted at WordCamp Raleigh we talk about what it is that Dave does, what Bitwire Media is all about, his session about brand reliability, Lorelle Van Fossen and a couple of other topics. By the way, I attended Daves session today at WordCamp Raleigh and the man is a good talker and keeps it real. Thanks for the interview Dave.
I had the opportunity to put Matts gift to work while attending WordCamp Raleigh. I have over 45 minutes worth of video to upload, one interview at a time. In this interview, I spoke with Jonathan Davis. In it, we talked about what is new with the Shopp plugin, what to expect once WordPress 3.0 comes out and other e-commerce related topics.
I encourage you to watch the video at full screen.
I’ve been wanting to give my new Flip HD camera a try ever since I received it. Fortunately, I had an opportunity to do so at the most recent North East Ohio WordPress meetup where I conducted a short interview with Brian Layman who is employed with B5 Media. In the interview, we talked about multi-site in WordPress 3.0 and what it will mean for B5 Media. This is also my first time using VideoPress. So far, so good. The original video was 250 megs in size but the FlipShare software was able to compress it down to 32 megs. Hopefully, the quality is still high enough to not cause much distortion. Let me know what you think and if you’d be interested in seeing more of these type of videos.
I just finished watching a great video presentation by Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman that discusses open source projects and poisonous people. I have seen this video and idea referred to numerous times but when it was referenced today in the WordPress Hackers Mailing list, I finally decided to sit down and devote an hour to watching the entire presentation.
While listening to the presentation, there were a number of instances in which I could relate certain things that have happened in the WordPress community to poisonous behaviour. I also had a better idea as to who some of these poisonous people are in the community or have been at some point. My verdict is that everyone who participates in the WordPress community or any online community for that matter should watch this video and then do a self review. I know there have been a few times especially with certain topics on the Tavern forum where I’ve harbored poisonous behavior but that is the not the goal of this website. I’ve stated this before and it’s worth saying again, WPTavern.com does not exist to poison the project or to inject conspiracies, hatred, or disgust into the project. It exists out of my enthusiastic views and uses of the software and the community surrounding it. I think a lot of people could do better to analyze how they discuss ideas or how they apply criticism without insults or taking it to a personal level. I also think there are a couple of people that could learn how to not respond to everything time and time again as if it’s their way or the high way.
Ultimately what this video showed me is that I have a lot to learn when it comes to the human element of open source software and managing a community.
Andrew Warner who produces the video show Mixergy which interviews entrepreneurs of successful start ups and established businesses has published the video featuring his interview with Adii of WooThemes.com. In the interview, we get a glimpse of just how successful WooThemes has become with net margins now in the 50-60% range and revenue of over two million dollars. Adii tells us how WooThemes was started, who inspired him in the beginning, the team involved with WooThemes, how they deal with theme piracy, brief discussion about the GPL and much more. All in all, it was a great interview that shed some light on one of the most successful businesses built on and around WordPress. Andrew Warner asked all the right questions, including some that I would have never thought to ask regarding the business aspect of WooThemes.
Oh, and I found a way to get WPTavern name dropped (36:40) on the show which I’m very appreciative of. Thanks again Adii and Andrew.
So I finally got around to doing a preview video of GravityForms, the much talked about form generation plugin aimed for release sometime this month. However, I learned that there is so much to this plugin that it doesn’t lend itself very well to the screencasting format. While my screencast is about 11-12 minutes long, it doesn’t even cover everything this plugin can do. While producing the screencast, I learned a thing or two about Camtasia such as adding transitions and how to edit the audio. I’m getting better but these things get tougher the longer they are. Also, I have no idea why but the video on Viddler for some reason can not be seeked. When you fast forward or rewind, it resets back to the beginning which is very annoying. I tried two different production methods in Camtasia but both produced the same results on Viddler. That is why I recommend you to download the source file which is in .MP4 format and view it in QuickTime or your favorite MP4 player.
*NOTE*
The video can now be seeked either through fast forward or rewinding without being reset to the beginning.
Matt Mullenwegs state of the Word presentation from WordCamp San Francisco is now online over at WordPress.TV. This is the presentation where Matt first introduced the merger between WPMU and WordPress.org, a commercial GPL theme page and a host of other announcements. Thanks to Dave Curlee, John P., and Michael Pick for getting this online. By the way, they did a good job with the video editing.
I didn’t realize how complicated styling threaded comments can be until I watched this video. David Perel published a screencast on From The Couch.com which goes over how to style threaded comments in WordPress complete with source files for the code but more importantly, hand holding to figure out all of the CSS required for good looking threaded comments. While this is a basic tutorial, it was easy for me to get lost between parent comments, sub comments, sub-sub comments, etc, but that is not his fault.
I suggest clicking on the FULL SCREEN mode to see the video clearly.
Community Member Brad recently made me aware of a video on WordPress.TV which contained Matt Mullenwegs Keynote session at WordCamp Germany. In this keynote, Matt discusses a wide range of things such as the history of WordPress/B2, Feature requests for 2.8, confirmed features for WordPress 2.8, unveiling of P2 (Prologue 2), short glimpse of his new blog design, and the GPL. I have not read much in the way of coverage based on what Matt presented in this video so here is the cliff notes version for those interested.
Matt Mullenweg’s first blog was powered by MovableType
Matt then moved onto something called B2
B2 was the first time Matt ever got involved with an Open Source Project
Matt’s passion for typography lead him to writing a patch for B2 which was accepted into the core creating a natural high which is the fuel that keeps Matt developing for Open Source software.
Lead developer of B2 disappeared for 9 months which caused users to create forks of the software.
Matt’s favorite software at the time was TextPattern. Matt said that if TextPattern was open source, WordPress wouldn’t exist.
Mike Little is the co-founder of WordPress and his comment on a blog post Matt made about the blog software dilemma is what really fueled Matt to fork B2.
Matt mentions that WordPress.org blogs have an average of 4.96 plugins installed with the repository now over 4,000 plugins.
Matt says 2008 was big because of the move towards user-driven development. Clearly illustrated with the redesign of the back end.
WordPress 2.8
Matt asks the crowd for feature requests for WordPress 2.8. Someone mentions the photoblog function as seen on Matt’s blog. CMS functions for organizing pages. And a few others.
Matt confirms what will be in WordPress 2.8.
Lots of theme support/upgrades. Entire theme directory browseable and installable from the backend like plugins. Something called CodePress theme editor to provide WYSIWYG template editing with code syntax highlighting. Any functions that are used in the theme will have links next to them which will take you to documentation pages for those functions. Theme upgrades.
Widget improvements such as management.
Custom Taxonomies. Introduced in WordPress 2.3 in the form of tags. A way to create richer semantics.
Faster! Matt says in WordPress 2.7, they added a BAJILLION lines of javascript. In WordPress 2.8, there will be alot of javascript optimizations to make the backend faster.
Matt then addresses using WordPress as a CMS. Matt did not expect people using WordPress as a CMS. WordPress was created as a means of being the best blog publishing tool possible but he showcases many examples of people using the software as a CMS.
Matt gives a sneak peak of his new blog design.
Matt also features the Monotone photoblog theme.
Matt makes the statement that he believe the previous 5 years have been about plugins and that the next 5 years will be about themes.
Matt thinks BuddyPress will be a big thing in 2009. He calls it Facebook in a box.
Matt then talks about Prologue and then showcases a new version code named P2. Prologue is considered to be Twitter in a box. Matt shows off prologue 1 versus prologue 2. P2 is now much wider with comments and everything else is now directly embedded onto the site. The entire site can also be managed using keyboard shortcuts. Comments are ajaxified and are inline. Also, someone who leaves a comment on the site will be able to see other comments published on the site as they are published in real-time. Almost like an ajax based chatroom. Use can use P2 as a real-time chatroom with all the benefits of a blog.
Even though Matt stated P2 would be released that week, I’ve double checked today and it is not currently available to the public. I couldn’t find it on the WordPress.com Theme SVN either.
Matt finalizes his presentation by going over the four freedoms of the GPL.
Matt says if he woke up one day with devil horns and wanted to do something evil, anyone could take the entire WordPress codebase and fork it, redistribute it, charge for it, etc. The ultimate liberty.
This is the first time I’ve heard of Matt actually bringing up the topic of the GPL in his presentations. This makes me wonder if because of the GPL debacle involved with the theme repository a few months ago if he is now trying to educate people across the world why WordPress is licensed under the GPL and the freedoms associated with the license.
One thing about Matt is that he is a great speaker and keeps the crowd entertained as well as focused on the subject at hand. Special thanks to the guys from WordCamp Germany for uploading this video to WordPress.TV.
Video Tutorial – Style Threaded Comments
By Jeffro on April 17, 2009
I didn’t realize how complicated styling threaded comments can be until I watched this video. David Perel published a screencast on From The Couch.com which goes over how to style threaded comments in WordPress complete with source files for the code but more importantly, hand holding to figure out all of the CSS required for good looking threaded comments. While this is a basic tutorial, it was easy for me to get lost between parent comments, sub comments, sub-sub comments, etc, but that is not his fault.
I suggest clicking on the FULL SCREEN mode to see the video clearly.
Posted in Video | Tagged styling, threaded comments, tutorial, videos | 2 Responses