This is round 2 of Episode 21 since last week, the show was canceled due to technical difficulties.In this episode, call in guests Brad Williams and Jacob Santos helped me dissect the news of the week. The show came out to be an hour long and I feel that we all did a pretty darn good job in covering the various viewpoints regarding the news items. Enjoy the show.
The next episode of WordPress Weekly won’t be until July 11th when Alex King will be on for an hour long interview. Mark that down on your calendars as I’m sure you won’t want to miss out on that. Have a happy and safe fourth of July!
This was one hell of an episode. For the first 35 minutes of the show, I interviewed Patrick O’ Keefe who is the author of the book, “Managing Online Forums“. Although this is a WordPress centric podcast, most users of WordPress either have a forum attached to their blog, run a forum seperate from their blog or at some point in time, dealt with running a forum. We discussed all sorts of issues related to managing a forum and then we dived into topics which were more in line with managing a community. There is some great information which was shared within this interview and I highly suggest giving it a listen. Thanks Patrick for stopping by.
After the interview, we dove into the news of the week. Near the end of the show, Darren Hoyt, author of the Mimbo Pro WordPress theme called in and I sort of did an impromptu interview with him. I asked him questions relating to the Mimbo Pro Theme, how successful it’s been since its release, his thoughts on theme clubs, the premium theme market and a wide assortment of other topics.
This is an hour and a half episode which is jammed pack with great information. Please enjoy the show and let me know what you think.
Episode 19 of WordPress Weekly has come and gone. In this episode, we discussed a number of issues which have been highlighted below. Remember that next week, WordPress Weekly will be air live at 10 PM EST instead of 9 PM EST as an experiment to see if more people show up to the show.
Well, another week has passed which means another edition of WordPress Weekly. In this episode, it was more like a free for all, talk about anything we want kind of deal. Although during the show, I did bring up a number of news items that I thought were worth discussing. During the introductions, I gave Ryan Hellyer a chance to announce a new WordPress Paid service that he has launched that deals with his new dropdown menu CSS generator. The service usually costs $50.00 but he ended up offering a deal for listeners of the WordPress Weekly podcast. If you sign up to his forum located here http://pixopoint.com/forum/ he was granting out free passes to the service. I’m not sure how long this offer will last so head on over to his forum and sign up!
I also allowed Ronald Huereca to explain the new iteration of his popular WordPress plugin, Ajax Edit Comments 2.0
Other than that, here are the stories we discussed:
Wow. Episode 17 of WordPress Weekly went off pretty well. For those of you who couldn’t make it to the live version, Matt Mullenweg was the special guest but to my surprise, he also brought with him Andy Peatling, lead developer of the BuddyPress project. In this weeks episode, I had Matt answer the following questions:
What are the proper or improper ways of using the WordPress trademark. What are some of the acceptable uses of the WordPress logo.
Could you explain the revenue model for Automattic.
Here are a list of projects that are currently ongoing and I’d like for you to give us an update on each one if possible. Akismet, Bbpress, TalkPress, BuddyPress, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Theme Repository, Gravatar
What role will Warwick play in Automattic? (Why was he hired on)
Most of us in the WordPress circle realize the design firm Happy Cog had something to do with the new WordPress administration redesign. Could you please explain their role and give us an explanation as to how the new design came to be what it is today.
How much influence do the end users of WordPress have on the development of the WordPress.org project?
We’ve seen a complete UI overhaul on the back end of WordPress and the inclusion of automatic plugin upgrades. What is coming down the pike in terms of WordPress 2.6 and beyond?
I apologize up front for the first 15 minutes of the show. While the interview was taking place, Matt had accidentally pulled the chord out of the speaker phone device, causing it to reboot. He later called in with his cell phone which didn’t have the best connection. Shortly there after, the speaker phone device came back on and the rest of the show had good audio quality.
Matt and Andy answered a number of questions from the chatroom as well as from those who called into the show. Thanks to everyone who showed up and participated in the event.
This week on WordPress Weekly, it was open mic week. However, it didn’t work out as I imagined and thankfully, I had a list of news items to use as a backup plan. It also helped that a couple of regulars who had some free time on their hand showed up to participate in the show. After letting listeners know about the renewal of the domain jeffro2pt0.com for two years, I dove into some feedback that I had received from listeners of the show. After that, introductions were made and then we dove into the news. This panel made one hell of a good show.
Hi Jeff, I wanted to drop a line to let you know how impressed I was by your podcast interview of former Blog ing Pro editor Dave Peralty. The questions were informed and you followed-up on the answers. Unlike many other podcast/video interviews of blogging executives, your show was actually informative beyond the tech fan audience.
Be sure to check out Ed’s blog as it reads like a newspaper and he does a great job with it.
I just wanted to say thanks for providing the WordPress Weekly podcast. It is the best podcast on WordPress I’ve found. I spent most of the past two days listening to your podcasts while working on my WordPress plugins and themes
Thanks for the kind words Ryan. I’m always trying to improve the show and if the content is worth while, mission is accomplished. Hope you can participate live one day.
NEWS STORIES:
Automattic Turns 21 – Not 21 years old, but that is now the number of people employed by Automattic. Automattic has hired Warwick Poole, former director of systems at Vidavee which was recently acquired by Vignette. According to his job title as “Systemologist” Warwick will be in control of Keeping the barriers to online publishing low, by scaling the infrastructure which runs WordPress.org, WordPress.com, Akismet.com and other related projects.
WordPress Training Videos – Kirk of WordPressTraining.com informed us in late April that the site now has training videos for the last two major versions of WordPress, that being 2.3 and 2.5. The videos are large, well authored and most importantly for many of you, they are free. If you are looking for videos that cover a variety of topics, your best bet would be to check out WeblogToolsVideos.com
New admin bar for WP.com users – If you use WordPress.com to blog or have an account with WP.com, you will notice that the admin bar thats at the top of your page has changed from blue, to grey. A minor adjustment to the My Account link now include the WordPress logo. The reason for the change was to allow the admin bar to gain less of your attention.
Farms 100 Big Ones Theme Pack – Yes, that’s correct, the latest theme pack has 100 delicious, 100% WPMU compatible, WordPress themes all for you. They are full of widgets (every theme is widgetized) and customizable headers galore.
Your Favorite BookMarklet? – Matt Mullenweg laid the question out their to the community to receive their feedback on what publishing bookmarklet did they favor the most. Many people including myself vouched for the usefulness of the Tumblr bookmarklet. Some mentioned the WP Quickpost plugin but others were quick to point out that the quickpost plugin lacked features. It would appear as though there may be some development going on into a new bookmarklet, which disappeared with the release of WP 2.5
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
I made a special announcement during the podcast but I am not going to tell where in the podcast the announcement was made and what the announcement consisted of. That will be saved for a post that is to come shortly.
Again, special thanks to the folks who showed up tonight. I thought this was going to be a tough show to do, but Charles, David and the rest of the regulars really chimed in which made the show fly by! I thought the discussion about the WordPress Trademark was excellent and quite a number of points/counter points were made. I’d be pretty interested to hear your feedback on this weeks show.
WordPress Weekly Episode 15 featuring David Peralty, formerly of BloggingPro.com and SplashPress media has come and gone. I thought it was an hour and a half of excellent information, particularly for those who are interested in the topics related to the business of blogging. This podcast featured a mix of topics such as, making money as a blogger, managing, implementing, and maintaining a blogging network, using separate WordPress installations as opposed to using WordPress-MU, WordPress and caching and so much more. Near the end of the show, I let Nathan Rice and David Peralty go back and forth as they had quite the conversation regarding some of the topics covered in last weeks show.
Also near the end of the show, David gave us the low down as to what is next for him in regards to leaving BloggingPro and SplashPress media. David has gained a position as community manager for Pic App. David also informed us that he will have a hand in helping to build and maintain the GrandEffect blogging network. David Peralty and blogging networks go together like peanut butter and jelly. At any rate, I wanted to thank David for coming on the show and sharing his expertise in regards to blogging networks as well as sharing his thoughts and opinions related to all of the WordPress questions I asked.
I currently do not have a guest lined up for next Friday’s show so it may be an open mic round table event. Stay tuned for details on that. Enjoy the show.
Episode 14 of WordPress Weekly featured an hour and a half interview with Nathan Rice of NathanRice.net. We covered premium themes, the theme market, some of the pros and cons of Small Potatoes theme club model, the issue of finding things in themes that shouldn’t be there and much more. I really enjoyed my time with Nathan and I thank him for coming on the show.
Well, I think this interview might go down as the best one I’ve done yet. Really enjoyed my 2 hour long interview with Lorelle where we covered everything from WordCamp Dallas to tips on using WordPress and then dove into some of the concepts of using WordPress to make money as well as general blogging issues. I really want to thank every one for joining the live show through the chat and to everyone who called in and asked questions. Without further adue, here is the 2 hour long interview.
Episode 12 of WordPress Weekly went into detail in regards to WordCamp Dallas. Near the end of the show, we delve into WordPress 2.5. We ended up sharing our favorite sessions at the WordCamp event as well as giving our 2.5 upgrade experience.
Next Friday will be episode 13 where Lorelle Van Fossen will be on the show for an hour long interview which will be interspersed with listener questions.
This is round 2 of Episode 21 since last week, the show was canceled due to technical difficulties.In this episode, call in guests Brad Williams and Jacob Santos helped me dissect the news of the week. The show came out to be an hour long and I feel that we all did a pretty darn good job in covering the various viewpoints regarding the news items. Enjoy the show.