Ipstenu once again has a great article that covers some situations in which MultiSite is not the best tool for the job. If you’re thinking that you need to use MultiSite to accomplish a certain task, make sure that task is not on her list. ∞
DBS Interactive Releases Theme Reference Guide
DBS Interactive which is an interactive agency has released their version of a WordPress 3.0+ theme reference guide. The guide is a reworked version of the information you would find in the Codex around template tags. So if the Codex presentation of this data is not your cup of tea, perhaps this reference guide will be easier to follow.
Recovering From A Crashed WordPress Site
Themefuse has a generally good checklist on things to do when a WordPress powered website crashes. While the article doesn’t contain any drastically new information, it’s still a good list of things to do to get your site back up and running as soon as possible if a crash were to occur. ∞
Interview With ManageWP Owner Vladimir Prelovac
ManageWP is a new service that aims to make managing multiple websites as easy as possible. They’ve recently opened their doors to the public and Vladimir Prelovac was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule to answer a few questions I had. Enjoy!
Is ManageWP a webhosting company or simply a means of managing websites that are hosted elsewhere?
We are not a webhosting company, as ManageWP provides an efficient way to manage any number of websites that are hosted on your own servers, but we do offer something new and unique to the WordPress community: one dashboard for all their websites no matter where they are hosted. This ensures that our users maintain total control over their websites while also ensuring that they can continue to expand, without restriction, far into the future.
ManageWP Dashboard After I Added The WPTavern Website
What was the idea or inspiration behind creating ManageWP?
As with all plugins I have developed, ManageWP was created out of the pure need to solve a problem. The problem here was having to do repetitive tasks — like updating and maintaining your sites (something computers and Internet services are supposed to be good at).
As you surely know, managing numerous WordPress sites can be somewhat time consuming. Add several WordPress sites into the mix, and you quickly become a slave to your CMS. I wanted to simplify the process, so that was when ManageWP became reality.
What are some of the things going on behind the scenes to make ManageWP function like a well oiled machine?
It requires a tremendous amount of effort by all of our team members. That’s the first thing that springs to mind. It’s not easy to create and maintain a service this complex, one which also remains in sync with the WordPress development cycle, all while having it work with thousands of different WordPress setups and with thousands of different server/hosting configurations.
It’s not an easy job. But we also have no intention of stopping anytime soon!
Options To Schedule A Backup For A Particular Site
What are some of the benefits of using ManageWP versus using WordPress Multisite?
The most notable benefit is ManageWP’s ease of us. While being a good idea on paper, WordPress Multisite demands a certain level of technical knowledge to install, manage, and maintain. It also takes time, time which many people find valuable. And while Multisite might be good enough for some people, we always want to offer our users so much more value and time-saving functionality.
And we differentiate ourselves by providing many awesome features:
- you can set up and monitor fully automated backups for all of your websites from one location, along with being able to specify exactly where you want those backups stored;
- you can use ManageWP to monitor your website’s up-time;
- you can use ManageWP to monitor crucial SEO performance metrics;
- you can take advantage of incredible third-party services like Google Analytics and DropBox;
- you can change passwords for your admin user on all of your WordPress sites from within ManageWP;
- and the list goes on and on.
As for the similarities between ManageWP and WordPress Multisite — it ends with the ability to update plugins. ManageWP goes far beyond that. However, if you’re already setup with WordPress Multisite, that’s no problem. ManageWP fully integrates with that too!
What types of security practices have been put into place to protect customers?
We know that the success of our business depends a lot on security; this has been our focus since day one. To ensure that our user’s data is secure, we dropped the built-in XML RPC protocol — it’s inherently insecure to work with as it exposes sensitive data. We replaced it with OpenSSL encryption. Because of this, the transmission of your data remains completely secure.
We also never ask users to enter their admin passwords for any websites they are managing with us. We do not have access to your site’s credentials and other crucial information. Our technology is innovative in that it allows ManageWP to talk directly to your WordPress sites through our ManageWP Worker plugin. So by utilizing WordPress’ built-in plugin architecture, we are able to do amazing things to help you manage all of your sites.
As for protecting your ManageWP account, we utilize multiple layers of protection: restricting the login by IP address and two-factor authentication (wherein a security code is sent to user’s email or phone via SMS). This is far beyond industry standards, and it’s only a handful of the things we do to ensure that our users’ sites are safe.
We take great pride in this.
All Sorts Of Cool Things You Can Do From One Location
Are there any differences between the self-hosted product of ManageWP and the ManageWP website?
The Enterprise (self-hosted) version of ManageWP is essentially the same as our hosted version. But we offer this to companies and organizations that want all of the benefits of ManageWP in the privacy of their own hosting environment. For example, this can be (and usually is) important for data compliance within larger organizations.
Our Enterprise users also enjoy our full attention and dedicated support. We often work with our Enterprise customers to provide them with the special features that they need. We always make the extra effort to ensure that our customers’ needs are served.
How has your experience in developing plugins and working with sites such as Mashable contribute to what you’ve accomplished with ManageWP?
I started making WordPress plugins almost five years ago, so getting to know WordPress inside-out helped me tremendously in understanding the needs of the average WordPress user — if such user exists at all, as there are so many uses for WordPress today. After that, it was then only a matter of coordinating with our team to develop a high-quality solution that works on almost any number of different WordPress setups.
And now that we have launched ManageWP, I can direct my focus my attention on improving it further and adding new and amazing functionality. That makes me very happy. I hope it will continue to make our incredible customers happy as well.
Jeff Starr On Smarter Slugs In WordPress
One of the refinements that was part of WordPress 3.3 is that posts that have certain characters within the post title are ignored thus, creating a cleaner permalink. Jeff Starr of Digging Into WordPress explains in better detail on what actually happens when you use those characters within the post title but further into the post, he also brings up the fact that WordPress can automatically detect duplicate post titles within the database and append a dash with a number to the end of the post title. However, as Dave Clements mentions in the comments, this could possibly lead to broken links:
I read something that’s a little concerning in your post. Let’s assume that I create test-post and then create test-post-2. I publish them both and then trash test-post. Are you saying that test-post-2 will automatically become test-post, potentially screwing up any links that have been published with the original permalink of test-post-2? Just wondering what impact this has.
Perhaps Otto could shed some light as to what happens regarding this scenario. Jeff Starr will be looking into it and will be reporting back his findings.
Bad Behavior In The WordPress Community
It started off with a link and turned into something disgusting. KevinJohn Gallagher explained the various reasons for why his company decided not to pursue using WordPress anymore for their clients and I linked to that article because I thought it raised some points that were good for discussion. After I linked to the article on WPTavern as well as Twitter, his article made the front page of HackerNews. ReadWrite/Web also linked to the article with their own thoughts. One of the reactions to his article that I witnessed was that a lot of people agreed with Kevin and the points he made. However, a number of people disagreed with him and in fact, disagreed so passionately that KevinJohn stated within the comments of my article that he had received death threats as well as had DDoS attacks performed to his website.
Sadly in the last 7 days I’ve had 3 ddos attacks, 14 threats (4 “credible”) against myself or my family, multiple requests to have me removed from speaking at WordPress events to which I’m already signed up and personally sponsor, and 31 people roll-back their purchase for Open Source Scotland because I’m involved. All because my staff, not me, but the good folks I work with every day, don’t want want to use WordPress anymore. I’m being punished by this community, for doing the right thing: listening to my colleagues and my clients.
On the one hand, this is ridiculous behaviour. There is no reason what so ever to give someone death threats because their company has decided not to use WordPress anymore. Mark Jaquith was strongly opposed to the harassment Kevin was receiving and even Jane Wells offered to help out KevinJohn.
On the other hand, crazy people exist within the realm of reality and they can not be controlled. Most of the conversation that occurred as the result of Kevin’s article were from sane individuals that make up the WordPress community. It’s unfortunate what Keven had to go through because of that post but I strongly disagree that it’s a reflection of how the actual WordPress community is like. There are pricks and jerks within the WordPress community, no doubt about that. But, in my experience the nicer people far outweigh the jerks.
I’m a big fan of WordPress but I’m not going to cry myself to sleep if someone tells me they are ditching the software for something else. It’s common sense to use the best tool for the job instead of forcing a square peg into a round hole. It’s important to listen to the reasons why people switch from WordPress or desert the software but it’s not something anyone should lose sleep over. It’s definitely not worth threatening someone’s life. It’s an opportunity to learn and figure out how the software can be improved. This is the type of attitude we should have towards folks like KevinJohn Gallagher or others that publish their discontent for WordPress. We shouldn’t be slapping people around with an elitist, cult like hand that twitches every time someone criticizes the software. We are better than that. Let’s prove it.
WordCamp Norway Participants Tell Us Why They Love WordPress
Pretty cool video from WordCamp Norway 2012 where participants answered the simple question of why they love WordPress. The video features some familiar faces such as Ronald Huereca, Ryan Hellyer, Magnus Jepson, Isaac Keyet, and Scott Basgaard. Scott looks like a giant when standing next to Ryan Hellyer.
WordPress And How It Changed Content Management
WordPress did not create the concept of content management. Such systems have been around since before the internet was a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. But true innovation rarely effects the greatest change. WordPress took an existing concept, made it highly useable, and introduced it to the masses (free of charge).
New Years Resolutions Related To WordPress
Dave Clements has a couple of New Years Resolutions related to WordPress that I think other people could benefit from such as commenting code and using a functionality plugin instead of stuffing the Functions.php file full of code. My resolution isn’t so much with WordPress itself, but it’s to attend at least three WordCamps in cities I haven’t visited yet. Have any WordPress related resolutions you plan on following through with? ∞
Experimental Method For Contributing To WordPress 3.4
Contributing to the development of WordPress looks like it will be completely different than in the past. According to the dev chat notes published on January 4th on the developer blog, the team has come up with an experimental method to not only create more accountability for everyone involved, but to also try and keep things on track when it comes to schedules. Aside from the team approach, the post also highlights the overall theme for WordPress 3.4, Making it easier to make your site look how you want it to look. Those of you hoping to make a splash in contributing to the development of WordPress 3.4 should read that post and consider filling out the survey attached to it.
This process is an experiment. It’s either going to work out wonderfully or turn into a ball of flames. I hope it works out for the best.