This episode was the first in a series discussing the commercialization of WordPress. Within this episode, we talked with three commercial theme authors who are in the midst of maintaining a successful business. Joining us on the round table was Jason Schuller of Press75/ThemeGarden.com, Brian Gardner of Studiopress, and Cory Miller of iThemes. Considering the commercial theme market will be red hot this year, this episode gives those new guys or aspiring commercial theme authors plenty of food for thought. Also, Matt Mullenweg made a surprise appearance near the end of the show to ask some questions he had to the members of the panel. Jacob Goldman did a great job asking some meaty questions that were really business focused and I feel that just about anyone who listens to this episode will be able to learn a thing or two about the business of commercial themes.
Smashing Book Contest:
Want to win a copy of the Smashing Book and a chance to participate in our wrap up episode on April 24th? Help us publicize the special WordPress Weekly series on commercialization! Just follow @WPTavern and guest co-host @jakemgold on Twitter, and Tweet a message mentioning us both with a link to the most recent episode. We’ll randomly pick one of our favorite tweets right before the next show.
We’ll be giving a book away for each of the episodes (excluding wrap up). You can participate each week. Each contest starts at 2pm on Saturday with the show’s recording, and ends the following Friday evening. You may participate if you’re outside of the contiguous United States, but will be asked to cover shipping expenses.
If we get over 500 participants in the contest, before the wrap up show, we’ll also give away one copy of Smashing WordPress to one participant after the last episode!
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This episode is also sponsored by EnvironmentsForHumans.com This is an organization that brings together expert speakers on a given topic exploring that topic from different angles. While they recently had a WordPRess Workshop, the next event will be a UX Web Summit on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (CT). This event will teach people how to improve their websites so that they are more responsive to visitors as well as making this more usable. If you’re interested in this summit, visit UXWebSummit.com
Part 2 of this series will take place on April 10th with the Commercial Plugins roundtable features Carl Hancock of Gravityforms, Ronald Huereca of Ajax Edit Comments and Jonathan Davis of the Shopp plugin.
This episode of WordPress Weekly features an hour long interview with Automattic employee, Paul Kim. Paul is mostly in charge of user growth between WordPress.com and WordPress.org but also with some of the other projects that Automattic has under their belt. In this specific interview, I had Paul go over the same presentation that he did at WordCamp New York 2009 slide by slide that talked about what he learned as well as his experience working with Mozilla prior to Firefox 1.0 being released. In order to get the most out of this interview, I encourage you to view his presentation as you’re listening to the show which you can do here via Slideshare. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Kim about the differences and similarities between the FireFox project and WordPress, especially as it relates to the communities of both and their marketing methods.
Kudos goes out to Paul for doing the interview with me while performing daddy duty.
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This episode is also sponsored by EnvironmentsForHumans.com This is an organization that brings together expert speakers on a given topic exploring that topic from different angles. There will be a WordPress Workshop day on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 from 9AM – 5PM(CT) — covering setup of WordPress in the morning and then theming in the evening with Matt Harris and Stephanie Leary as well as looking to WordPress 3. More information can be found at CMSdays.com
Announcements:
In April, I’ll be doing a series of shows centered around the commercialization of WordPress. The first round table show will be about commercial themes. Send in your questions here.
I’m dedicating the entire month of April to the commercialization of WordPress through themes, plugins and services on WordPress Weekly. Each week will feature a round-table of guests in each field that is either currently in the market or has substantial experience in the market. Joining me to co-host these shows will be Jacob Goldman of C.MurrayConsulting also one of the organizers of WordCamp Boston 2010. During WordCamp Boston, I had the opportunity to host a panel devoted to having a business built in and around WordPress with one plugin author, one theme author, and two members to represent services. In that panel, I realized that I needed more time and each section needed to have it’s own dedicated time slot to really cover the finer details. WordPress Weekly is the perfect way to do this.
Here is what the outline looks like so far with only one guest pending.
April 3rd – Themes
Brian Gardner – StudioPress.com
Jason Schuller – Press75 and ThemeGarden
Cory Miller – iThemes.com
April 10th – Plugins
Carl Hancock – GravityForms
Ronald Huereca – Ajax Edit Comments
Jonathan Davis – Shopp E-Commerce (Pending)
April 17th – Services
Joshua Strebel – Page.ly
Daniel Bachhuber – CoPress
Raanan Bar-Cohen – Automattic
As of right now, April 24th will be a wrap-up show where we can talk about what we’ve learned during the course of the month.
Unfortunately, I had to cut off about 15 minutes of the show because of audio problems associated with my connection to talkshoe through X-Lite which is usually very stable. The first 15 minutes explained my week of webhosting hell as well as the weird random issues I’ve been encountering but I’ll go into more detail on those in a new post. However, I didn’t cut much out of the interview with Ronald. In thins interview, we get a better idea on how Ajax Edit Comments works, features that were included in the latest 4.0 release, why they decided to go with a price point of only $10.00 a year, various questions concerning the commercial nature of the business and much more. We also get information on a brand new book Ronald is working on that strictly focuses on using AJaX within WordPress. By the way, those who purchase a subscription to WP Ajax Edit comments before the book is released will receive a free copy.
*Special Coupon* – Ajax Edit Comments has already experienced the increase in price that was mentioned during the show. However, I’ve talked with Ronald and he has agreed to give WPTavern readers and WPWeekly listeners a special coupon code that is valid for 48 hours to get the plugin at the original price of $10.00 The coupon code is wptavern.
Also, Ronald has added a PDF preview of his upcoming book, the WP Ajaxa can be viewed here. The preview includes the first three chapters and a table of contents.
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This episode is also sponsored by EnvironmentsForHumans.com This is an organization that brings together expert speakers on a given topic exploring that topic from different angles. There will be a WordPress Workshop day on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 from 9AM – 5PM(CT) — covering setup of WordPress in the morning and then theming in the evening with Matt Harris and Stephanie Leary–as well as looking to WordPress 3. More information can be found at CMSdays.com
Announcements:
I’ll be interviewing Paul Kim of Automattic on Saturday, March 27th to talk about his experiences while working for Mozilla.
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, I spoke with Mike Cloutier who operates the RidgewayHerald.ca domain. The RidgewayHerald is a local online paper that specializes in local politics such as town hall meetings within the greater metro Ridgeway and Fort Erie areas of Canada. During our discussion, we talked about the state of the print industry and how it’s affected Mike, his reasons for using WordPress, his perspective as a first time user of the software, and last but not least, tips and tricks from the audience to help Mike with his site.
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This episode is also sponsored by EnvironmentsForHumans.com This is an organization that brings together expert speakers on a given topic exploring that topic from different angles. There will be a WordPress Workshop day on March 31st from 9AM -5 PM Central Time. Learn how the pros set up a CMS and get practical advice on how to create and apply custom themes with less hassle. This is a virtual conference so click here to register for the event.
In the first Saturday edition of WordPress Weekly, I interviewed Michael Koenig who is VP Of Marketing for IntenseDebate as well as an evangelist. During this episode, Michael gave us the low down on what IntenseDebate was all about, how the service works, how it can be extended by end users, and how it is different than some of the other third party commenting services available. Another interesting part of the discussion centered around the fears involved with using a third party to handle comments and how IntenseDebate calms those fears with its synchronization feature.
The turn out for the show was much better than what I’ve been seeing on Tuesday evenings which I’m pretty happy to see. Also during this interview, I accepted a challenge from Michael. The challenge was to install the IntenseDebate plugin and use the service for at least one week. Starting March 8th, the comment form on WPTavern.com will be powered by IntenseDebate until March 15th. After the challenge is over with, I’ll write a review and also solicit feedback from those who submitted comments on the site within this time frame.
Ad Copy:
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Announcements:
On March 13th, I’ll be interviewing Mike Cloutier to talk about his use of WordPress for RidgewayHerald.ca and we’ll also talk about the state of the print industry as he sees it.
This was like having two episodes in one. During the first 20 minutes of the show, Hal Stern and Brad Williams gave me the 411 on their upcoming WordPress book, Professional WordPress. This book was written to take people directly into the core code of WordPress to figure out how it works and to explain how the internals of WordPress such as filters, hooks, and functions come together. The second part of the show featured an interview with Brad Williams of WebDevStudios.com where we discussed his consulting business built around an open source project. We also talked about some of the key differences in Joomla and Drupal compared to WordPress. Last but not least, we talked about their recently released plugin, CollabPress which may be one of the first plugins to really bring functioning task management into WordPress.
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What a pleasant surprise this show turned out to be. I started the show solo but about 10 minutes into the recording, a familiar voice called into the show. You might know him as Matt Mullenweg. Kim Parsell also joined me to talk about WordPress. We discussed a number of stories that occurred during the week but since Matt was on the line, I went into rapid fire mode discussing all sorts of things such as the road map for bbPress, the WordPress store and its possible role with the foundation, ideas on the best way to provide feedback on a problem, the most difficult aspect of managing the WordPress project, a bit about the default theme, why he won’t be attending as many WordCamps this year and just a ton of other stuff. Really want to thank Matt for dropping by on a night where I was prepared to go solo.
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As I continue to produce the WordPress Weekly show every week, I’m beginning to notice that some of the greatest aspects of the show are not being put to good use. There are two main reasons why I continue to produce WordPress Weekly. The first is that I’m continuing to learn about the software by interviewing those who know more than me. I also love talking about all aspects of the software and the community around it. The second reason is that unlike any other WordPress based podcast, Talkshoe provides the tools for you, the listener to engage in the show by calling in and being part of the discussion. Don’t get me wrong, the chat room built into the show is a good way to be part of the live audience but actually calling in and having another voice on the air is even better.
Since I’ve switched the show to Tuesday nights, live participation has plummeted. I thought it would have been better since it’s not on a Friday evening, Tuesday evenings are boring, etc. However, I had more participation on Friday evenings than I’ve ever had on Tuesdays. This is disappointing. The way I see it, I bring on guests to the show to learn from them but I also bring them on because it gives you the opportunity to call in and talk to them in person. Due to the busy nature of the guests, it may be damn near impossible to communicate with them, WordPress Weekly gets rid of that barrier, giving you a chance to say what it is that is on your mind to the guest, with no middle man or filter, minus the expletives of course. But people don’t seem to be taking advantage of these opportunities. Some in the community jokingly call me the voice of WordPress but I don’t solely want to be the voice of WordPress. I want to be that person who makes it possible for other voices to be heard. I’m holding up my end of the bargain but the other side, not so much. This has me thinking whether doing the show live is worth the trouble.
Maybe Tuesday evenings are terrible nights for everyone. It doesn’t help that the last season of LOST is on at the same time. So, I’m thinking about making a drastic move.
I’m now setup at work on a schedule of 30 hours or less, 4AM – 10AM. While I hate being tied to the house during the weekend, I feel that doing the show early enough on a Saturday or Sunday negates the risk of having to reschedule the show due to life getting in the way. So my idea now is to possibly move the recording day and time to either Saturday or Sunday between 1-3 PM. It’s the weekend, it’s early enough to not get in the way of anything and I have a hard time understanding why participation would be even less than a Tuesday evening.
I know the show has an international audience and the day and times may not work out for everyone, but this is a game I can not win. I have to do the show when it’s best for me or else there is no show. If I can’t find a way to increase live participation on a regular basis, I’m going to stop doing the show.
Of course, I’m keen to hear how the proposed date and time sound to you.
I was unaware that the U.S. with the exception of a few people were in front of their TV’s to watch the season premiere of LOST. Thankfully, I had Kim Parsell and Ryan Duff call in to make sure I wasn’t lonely on the show. We actually had a great conversation centered around the future of themes, theme frameworks, HTML5, the default theme, etc. It was a theme show for sure but when you get me on the topic of theme frameworks, rant mode kicks in and it’s hard for me to let go. I’d be interested in your thoughts after you hear the rants.
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This episode was the first in a series discussing the commercialization of WordPress. Within this episode, we talked with three commercial theme authors who are in the midst of maintaining a successful business. Joining us on the round table was Jason Schuller of Press75/ThemeGarden.com, Brian Gardner of Studiopress, and Cory Miller of iThemes. Considering the commercial theme market will be red hot this year, this episode gives those new guys or aspiring commercial theme authors plenty of food for thought. Also, Matt Mullenweg made a surprise appearance near the end of the show to ask some questions he had to the members of the panel. Jacob Goldman did a great job asking some meaty questions that were really business focused and I feel that just about anyone who listens to this episode will be able to learn a thing or two about the business of commercial themes.
WPWeekly Episode 90 – Interview With Michael Koenig
By Jeffro on March 7, 2010
The turn out for the show was much better than what I’ve been seeing on Tuesday evenings which I’m pretty happy to see. Also during this interview, I accepted a challenge from Michael. The challenge was to install the IntenseDebate plugin and use the service for at least one week. Starting March 8th, the comment form on WPTavern.com will be powered by IntenseDebate until March 15th. After the challenge is over with, I’ll write a review and also solicit feedback from those who submitted comments on the site within this time frame.
Ad Copy:
Get the most out of your search engine optimization with the All In one SEO Pro plugin. This version removes donation and advertisement sections, ideal for developers and firms using the plugin on client sites. A support forum is also available for the Pro version. Visit wpplugins.com today and check out All in One SEO Pro. Limited time New Year sale of 40% off
Announcements:
On March 13th, I’ll be interviewing Mike Cloutier to talk about his use of WordPress for RidgewayHerald.ca and we’ll also talk about the state of the print industry as he sees it.
WPWeekly Meta:
Next Episode: Saturday, March 13th 2P.M. EST
Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe
Length Of Episode: 54 Minutes
Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode90.mp3
Listen To Episode #90:
Posted in WordPress Weekly | Tagged comments, intensedebate, interview, talkcast, wpweekly | 8 Responses