Episode 31 of WordPress Weekly featured a special 1 hour 26 minute interview with none other than Lisa Sabin Wilson, the author of WordPress For Dummies. Keith and I grilled Lisa on the topics of:
Writing a book for a piece of software which has an extremely fast development cycle
How different versions affect the publishing of the book
WordPress For Dummies The Second Edition
Lisa’s thoughts on WordPress 2.7
Lisa’s explanation on permalinks and slugs
Lisa’s take on premium themes versus free themes
much, much, more.
Keith and I really enjoyed our time with Lisa and wish her the best for the second edition of WordPress For Dummies.
Announcements: The two lucky recipients who will each receive a signed copy of WordPess For Dummies 2nd Edition are Chris Thompson and Lenire.
Keith, Andrew, Jacob and I discussed the news of the week. In fact, I tried to break the world record by opening up as many cans of worms as possible within a 60 minute period. You’ll have to listen to the show to hear if I was successful.
We encourage you to leave a comment whether it be feedback, questions, rants, or corrections then tune in and see if your comment made it on the air! To send us feedback via email, conect us at wpweekly at gmail dot com.
Plugin Of The Week:
Jeff -WPTuner – WP Tuner for WordPress is a powerful and easy way to answer hard questions about why your blog is slow or cranky. What’s causing the slowdown? Is it a plugin? Is it your host? This plugin will help you find out. Used with a bit of common sense, this powerful plugin helps blog administrators as well as software developers improve their WordPress blog performance – One caveat with this particular plugin is that it’s not for the faint of heart. While I was able to understand what the plugin was showing me, it may not be that obvious to you. Be sure to read the plugins readme file and the associated help documents before using it.
Keith -Comment Approval Notification – This WordPress plugin will send an email to comment authors once their held-for-moderation comment is approved.
The WolfHound Segment:
Bill needs some help working with WordPress. He came away from WordCamp Dallas excited to use the software but has run into a few roadblocks and thus, needs our help. So to help Bill out, we have created the WolfHound segment because we know that not everything we cover on the show is addressed to a specific audience. I’ve been told numerous times by new comers who listen to the show that the content flies over their head. If this sounds familiar, this segment is for you.
The Short History Of The Blog And Near Term Goals:
Here is a quick history of Bills blog. – Installed a late 1.x version and have been updating along the way and experimenting with themes. Just recently I finally installed Akismet after I starting get hit with spam. Being that I still considered it to be “in work” I never really let the world know it was out there. I guess you could say that I have two sets of goals. One being near term and the other long term.
First, the near term goals.
1) Get my logo to work on my chosen theme (Chameleon 1.0 by Ainslie Johnson)
2) Only have most recent articles (2 max) appear on front page
3) Settle on what should be considered “must-have” plug-ins
Listen to the show to hear our responses. If you disagree and feel you can help Bill out better than we did, leave a comment with your tips and suggestions.
Announcements:Lisa Sabin Wilson, Author of the WordPress For Dummies book is scheduled to appear on November 28th.
WPWeekly Meta:
Next Episode: Friday November 28th, 2008 8P.M. EST
Keith, Andrew, Mark and I discussed the news of the week. With guest contributions to the show, we went in-depth on a number of topics including the icon survey and much more. Don’t forget to tune in to hear our plugin picks of the week. Come back next week for more action packed WordPress discussions!
We encourage you to leave a comment whether it be feedback, questions, rants, or corrections then tune in and see if your comment made it on the air! To send us feedback via email, conect us at wpweekly at gmail dot com. In this weeks episode, we covered a comment that was submitted to the blog on a previous episode. We also answer a listener question regarding how to let visitors submit stories to a website without being a registered user.
Plugin Of The Week:
Jeff -WP Advanced Code Editor – Integrates the EasyArea advanced code editor into WordPress. This adds real time syntax highlighting, line numbering, full screen editing, and more to the code editor to the “Add New Post” and “Add New Page” screens. After installation, make sure that the WYSIWYG editor is disabled. WP Advanced Code Editor is not compatible with the WYSIWYG editor. The entire syntax code editor (called EasyArea) was written entirely by Christophe Dolivet.
Keith -Ultimage Google Analytics – Automatically enables the use of GoogleAnalytics’ urchin tracking technology to pull together web stats
WordPress Job Of The Week:
Job published on November 12th 2008. The job description is as follows:
Hello, My name is Dave and I write a pop culture blog called NineDaves.com, out of the NYC area (Flatiron District). My server is Yahoo, and I’ve been with WordPress since I started the blog in July 2008. Since then, I’ve had the same WordPress version. I’m interested in upgrading to a more current version, but I’m nervous. Despite the fact that WordPRess offers detailed “how to’s,” I’m still worried that I don’t understand things properly. Rather than have someone just do it for me, I would like a WordPress expert to teach me to fish.
So – would you be interested in showing me how to upgrade my WordPress before I mess something up and lose all my work? I’d prefer someone to meet me in person and show me how to do it, so if you live in the NYC area, that’s perfect! If not, I can set up a WebEx and phone call.
As you can probably tell from the title, this episode features quite a bit of discussion surrounding WordPress 2.7. Not to worry though as there are plenty of other things that Keith and I discuss such as our favorite feature in WordPress 2.7 Beta 1, the WordPress showcase, whether or not Drupal can beat WordPress, and near the end of the show, Anthony Cole called in and gave us the 411 on WordCamp Australia which is taking place on November 29th and November 30th.
We encourage you to leave a comment whether it be feedback, questions, rants, or corrections then tune in and see if your comment made it on the air!
Plugin Of The Week:
Jeff -Custom Permalinks – Custom Permalinks is a WordPress plugin that gives you ultimate control over your site structure. Lay out your site the way you want it. Set the URL of any post, tag or category to anything you want. Old permalinks will redirect properly to the new address.
Keith -Feed Entry Header – FeedEntryHeader provides you the ability to protect your content online. Many of us have had the experience of seeing our content posted mysteriously on someone else’s website word-for-word. It usually happens by having someone grab content from your RSS feed and slap it into their blog. (Bloody splogs!) This plugin provides you the ability to customize a header to be placed at the start of each article in your feed to help ensure that sploggers are pointed out, and links back to your original post are included in the splog’s repost.
WordPress Job Of The Week:
Job was posted on October 30th, 2008 by Mark Ghosh. The job description is as follows:
We are looking for a web and graphics designer for a popular blog. Ideal candidates include artists and designers with experience in working on WordPress, who have a fair amount of experience in designing graphics with a flair for modern colors and styles and the ability to conceptualize and produce web experiences from the ground up. Experience with SEO, web usability, semantics and
ethical and effective marketing also required. PHP programming experience not as important. If you want to work with us, you need to wow us with your portfolio. Individuals and design houses welcome. Our promise is to give you the ability to flex your design muscles, provide outlets for your creativity and a lot of exposure for your work. If we like your work, we will get back with you and talk about costs and timelines under NDA.
If interested please contact mark at wltc dot net
WPWeekly Meta:
Next Episode: Friday November 14th, 2008 8P.M. EST
Our special guest on Halloween night was Jane Wells of Automattic. On this episode, Keith, Jane and I discussed a wide assortment of topics and issues surrounding WordPress and usability. Here is a short list:
The Definition Of Usability
WordPress 2.7 And Usability
The Usability Testing Centers/Environment
How WordPress 2.7 Came To Be
Is WordPress Bloated?
Lessons Learned After WordPress 2.5 Was Released
The Status Of WordPress 2.7 And Whether Or Not It Is Delayed
In Depth Discussion Of Many Of The New Features And Enhancements In 2.7
And much much more. Be sure to download the show and give it a listen and then come back here to leave a comment letting us know your thoughts regarding what was discussed. I easily consider this episode to be another classic WordPress Weekly.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Keith and I dissect the news of the week. We discuss why commenter’s and bloggers should use Gravatar, our thoughts and opinions on the new 2.7 dashboard mock up, Akismet 2.2.1 with stats and much more. We try to solve a problem which was submitted to us by Nicolas and before the end of the show, we give you our plugin picks of the week along with the job of the week. Don’t forget that next Friday, (Halloween) our special one hour guest will be Jane Wells who works for Automattic in the usability/experience department. As you can imagine, we’ll be focusing the conversation on WordPress and usability.
Tune in to see if your comment or email made it on the air!
We encourage any feedback you might have whether it be a question, a suggestion or a rant. You can either email us at feedback@jeffro2pt0.com or you can simply leave us a comment on the blog.
Plugin Of The Week:
Jeff -Slayers Custom Widgets – Slayers custom widgets enables users to select which widgets appear on specific posts, pages, categories, and tag pages. By default, all widgets appear wherever the sidebar is loaded within your theme. With this plugin, you can configure where widgets are displayed on a per post basis. I’d like to see the ability to control which widgets appear on which template such as configuring a widget to appear on pages that utilize the single.php template while hiding that same widget from other templates.
Keith -Pluginstaller – This plugin allows you to control all aspects of plugin management far more effectively than the default behaviour in WP. It allows for the installation and management of plugins directly from the admin interface with no need for FTP or SSH access to your server’s file system. This is the kind of plugin I use on and off. When I’m installing a new WP instance and have a whole bunch of plugins to configure, I’ll use pluginstaller to handle the download, unzip and activate processes, and then sometimes I’ll turn it off. Pluginstaller also organizes the interface in a much more aesthetically pleasing way.
WordPress Job Of The Week:
Job was posted on October 22nd, 2008 by a company called Zidalgo. The job description is as follows:
I am in need of altering my loop display options on my index.php file. I currently have everything laid out the way I want it, but the page navigation does not work properly, since I’m utilizing multiple loops. I want four posts normally displayed, then four under them (hopefully in the same loop) that have different layouts. I want the page navigation to work according to all 8 posts.
More details await.
Project should be relatively easy for a PHP/WP experienced coder. Please contact asap for job. Thank you
If you’re interested you can contact numethod at gmail.com
In this action packed episode of WordPress Weekly, Keith and I dissect the news of the week. Jacob Santos was cool enough to call in to confirm that Andrew Rickmanns idea of placing a configure link inside of the plugin management panel would be included in the core. Also, he gave us an update as to how far he and others have come with in line documentation. Stay tuned for our plugin picks of the week and our job of the week.
Tune in to see if your comment or email made it on the air!
We encourage any feedback you might have whether it be a question, a suggestion or a rant. You can either email us at feedback@jeffro2pt0.com or you can simply leave us a comment on the blog.
Plugin Of The Week:
Jeff -Quick Configuration Links For Plugins – It’s a plugin that will scan the WordPress menu structure and attempt to locate the configuration page for each of the active plugins, and add a “Settings” link to the plugin’s row – right besides the “Deactivate” and “Edit” links. The plugin is also smart enough to skip this for plugins that have already added the configuration link on their own (in most cases).
Job was posted on October 15th, 2008 for the company RxHealthQuotes.com Inc. My site is increasing in traffic. Time to transfer from local hosting company to a more robust solution. I’d like to work with a pro who can (a) recommend an appropriate host (b) oversee a seamless transition of the database and php files (c) provide ongoing support for a fee.
You can apply for this job by contacting william at rxhealthquotes dot com or by reading the detailed job post information.
Announcements:
Jane Wells who works for Automattic in the user experience/usability department will be our special one hour guest on Halloween night. That is Friday, October 31st, 2008. So if you’re interested in talking usability in WordPress, definitely mark this date on your calendar.
In this highly optimized episode of WordPress Weekly, I interviewed Michael Torbert who is more commonly known as hallsofmontezuma throughout the WordPress community. He is now the developer of the most popular plugin in the plugin repository, the All In One SEO pack. We discuss what it’s like to maintain an insanely popular plugin, how difficult it has been to work with the WordPress code, thoughts on SEO in general, and the question of the night went to David Peralty for asking if SEO could be damaged by mis configuring the plugin. You’ll have to listen to the show to get the answer. On top of that, I give my plugin pick of the week, the WordPress job of the week and much more on episode 24 of WordPress weekly.
News:
WordPress 2.7 is nearing feature freeze. Once that happens, we should start to see announcements in the dashboard regarding beta releases. Based on everything I have read, 2.7 is on schedule to be released on November 10th. If something major is discovered during the beta trials, the date of release will obviously be changed.
Didn’t get the chance to mention this on the show but I wanted to pass along a happy birthday to HackWordPress.com as they have turned 1 year old.
Feedback:
I cover feedback related to last weeks episode. We encourage any feedback you may have with regards to the show. You can either email me via jeffro at jeffro2pt0.com or you can simply leave us a comment on the blog.
Plugin Of The Week:
Jeff -Exclude Pages – This plugin adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages (which includes, and is usually limited to, your page navigation menus). Pages which are children of excluded pages also do not show up in menu listings. (An alert in the editing screen, underneath the “include” checkbox allows you to track down which ancestor page is affecting child pages in this way.) You could do this just as easily by adding exclusion arguments to the WP_LIST_PAGES function but this plugin takes those steps out of the process.
WordPress Job Of The Week:
This job was published on October 10th on the WeblogToolsCollection.com Job board. Sure Foods Living is looking for someone who can upgrade WordPress 2.1 to the current version. The individual at one point had someone to help them customize their site but that person is no longer available. Also, because of the upgrade, this person needs to change templates since the current one is not compatible with the latest version of WordPress. The potential client is asking for people who are qualified and for quotes on how much this project would cost. If you are interested in this job, please contact alison at surefoodsliving.com
Announcements:
Jane Wells who works for Automattic in the user experience/usability department will be our special one hour guest on Halloween night. That is Friday, October 31st, 2008. So if you’re interested in talking usability in WordPress, definitely mark this date on your calendar.
While not broadly advertised, I happened to catch Brian Gardner for about an hour to discuss his announcement regarding going open source. During the interview, we discuss topics such as the grey area of the GPL, his new business model, his new approach to themes, how similar his business model is to the WordPress.com model, the state of themes in WordPress and much more.
Episode 23 of WordPress Weekly is now ready for your consumption. In this episode, Keith and I discuss the IntenseDebate acquisition and what that means for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org while also discussing the business aspects of the deal. We also give our thoughts on the developmental version of WordPress 2.7 thus far. We highlight the fact that there has been at least two differen UI surveys available to the public highlighting the increased awareness as well as end user participation into the final product. There is a major difference between the way the UI is being handled in terms of end user feedback between WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.7. Last but not least, Keith and I give you our plugin picks up the week.
Hallsofmontezuma otherwise known as Michael Torbert will be appearing on the first half hour of WordPress Weekly episode 24 Friday October 10th, 2008 at 8 P.M. EST. During this interview, we’ll be covering what it takes to write plugins for WordPress, what it’s like to maintain a plugin used by plenty of WordPress users and much more. If you have questions for this plugin author, be sure to show up during the live stream and ask them in the chatroom or, you can ask them here in the comments.
Also, pay attention to the podcast feed as later this week, you’ll receive a dose of extra content that is not directly related to the podcast.
Thanks to Ryan Mccue, we now have an IRC room setup for the show for those who are technically savvy and who don’t enjoy the Talkshoe interface. Once I receive the IRC information, I’ll pass it along.
Here it is. The final episode of WordPress Weekly where I interviewed Alex King for about an hour. We discussed all sorts of things related to WordPress such as plugin development, themes, his plugins, trends online, why WordPress is so popular, comparisons between Drupal and WordPress and last but not least, questions and callers chimed in with their own questions.
Thank you to anyone who has downloaded and listened to the show during it’s existence. It’s been an interesting ride for 22 episodes and I’ve learned a lot in regards to broadcasting live within that period of time. Thanks to everyone who left me feedback and commented on the show. Special thanks goes out to everyone who happened to be a semi-co-host on the air with me and thanks for participating live every week.
What will I be doing now? I plan on bringing back Perfcast which is a podcast produced under the Performancing brand which will cover all things blogging. This means we’ll talk about SEO, monetization, plagiarism, copy writing, plugins, themes, news of the week and much, much more. I want to broaden my horizons and Perfcast will be the perfect model for what I want to do with my podcasting skills. I plan on doing the show live as I love community participation. Look for it to be launching somewhere near September.
Episode 31 of WordPress Weekly featured a special 1 hour 26 minute interview with none other than Lisa Sabin Wilson, the author of WordPress For Dummies. Keith and I grilled Lisa on the topics of: