WPCandy has announced that they have launched a new service called Pressed Ads. While WPCandy was initially surviving ad free thanks to their Powered By System, reality has sunk in. Their powered by system will now be going in two directions, one for their readers and one for businesses. The unique advertising network will be centered around WordPress centric products and services while also being invite only for advertisers and publishers. It looks like the goal is to have Pressed Ads show up on the most influential WordPress sites which will provide extremely high relevancy with regards to the type of advertising that will be displayed on those sites through the network. Since the beginning of the year, the powered by system, has enabled Ryan to work on WPCandy full time which is amazing in and of itself.
I for one wish Ryan the best of luck. If he can manage to find a way to get paid enough money to live a semi decent life while putting food on the table not made of Ramen noodles which also allows him to work on WPCandy full-time, more power to him. He would then be accomplishing everything I didn’t. I tried advertising and managing that myself, affiliate programs, the botched VIP section in the forum and in fact, donations. None of the revenue was guaranteed and at times, I would go a few weeks without receiving a dime. I think my downfall in the advertising was that I was not a salesman and for the most part, didn’t want to be one. The best situation that could have happened for me was if I could find someone willing to pay me a flat fee on a weekly basis. Sort of like an investment, an investment in ME and the content I publish. That way, WPTavern ended up more like a job for me that I knew I was going to get paid for versus busting my ass and sometimes reaping no rewards. But I could never figure out how I’d convince anyone to go through with that type of investment, at least not anyone with the kind of income that would even consider it valuable to do so. I just wanted to concentrate on generating the content I and my readers/listeners enjoyed without going broke.
Right now, WPCandy is the place to be. It’s the hip spot when it comes to WordPress news and community. Ryan knows the people he needs to know and it’s obvious he has the support of some great companies that are backing him on his work with WPCandy and now, Pressed Ads. Now it’s time to see if his passion and desire along with all that support are enough to get him and the site up to the next level.
Kaspars Dambis of Konstruktors.com has publised his second version of a proposed user interface design for his popular Widget Context plugin. Widget Context is a plugin that provides users the opportunity to show or hide widgets. I’ve used Widget Context in the past but I’ve been quite happy with the performance and functionality of Widget Logic which relies on me knowing about Conditional Tags. Because of the conditional tags concept, it’s not the most user friendly plugin. However, I am very satisfied with how it works. By default, when a widget is enabled in WordPress, it’s displayed within the sidebar on every page that sidebar is loaded. After configuring a widget through Widget Logic to only show up on the front page via the conditional tag, it is then hidden on all other pages EXCEPT the frontpage. So in a way, I’m configuring where the plugin will display and be hidden at the same time.
Widget Context on the other hand has the ability to tell widgets where they are hidden and where they will be shown. Some may see this as a benefit as more flexibility, but I see it as another layer of complexity. The second edition of the proposed user interface for Widget Context is as follows:
You can also see a live demo of the UX proposal. I like the idea of being able to search for pages or posts to show or hide widgets during the configuration process. However, this version of the plugin implements rules that can have lower or higher power based on their vertical arrangement. While this provides more flexibility, I think it adds complexity. Since this type of functionality looks like it will never make it into the core of WordPress based on everyone that has told me “There’s a plugin for that” I’d like to share with Kaspars and anyone else that may be looking into this realm of WordPress functionality what I’d like to see so that we can have a GO TO plugin that everyone can use.
I’m thinking of a plugin that’s a cross between Widget Logic and Widget Context. This plugin should work on the premise that anytime a widget is added to a sidebar, it’s viewable across the entire site where that sidebar loads. UI is added to the widget screen so that I can easily search or choose from the various template files that make up my theme to decide where the widget will be displayed. By specifically configuring where the widget will be displayed, I’ve also configured where it will not be displayed. I’m not quite sure which user interface would work best for selecting more than one area where the widgets will be displayed, perhaps the check box method that already exists in Widget Context. This is about all I’d need to satisfy my needs. It’s simple, not many options and I think covers the basis for a lot of uses. Now, if Kaspars or users suggested that they wanted rules, or more complex ways of telling their widgets where to show up or hide, I would not complain about having an Advanced tab that showed additional options. But I definitely don’t want that clutter in view as part of the default configuration UI.
I’m not sure if I explained my vision very well but if you could, please take a look at the proposed changes and offer Kaspars some suggestions if you have any.
Mark Jaquith recently performed a scan on a local copy of the WordPress plugin respository and was able to generate a list of basic quoted string shortcodes within the plugins. The list looks like it could go to the moon and back with some funky looking shortcodes that are not very descriptive. Mark notes that there has been some discussion on whether or a not, a directory should be built and published which notes all of the shortcodes in use from all plugins in the repository so that plugin authors can check and see if their own shortcodes would conflict with any other plugins or perhaps, make theirs compatible with another.
While I don’t dabble in as nearly as many plugins these days, I can say that I’ve never gone through the experience of dealing with a shortcode conflict. If you have, I’d love to hear your story.
Morality Of Forking – Another well written piece covering the GPL, this thing called Spirit and an explanation that you can abide by both and still be a jerk.
Before I started using WordPress in 2007, I was a Joomla enthusiast. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. You could (and still can) control where and when certain modules would show up, there was an active community and a bunch of plugins along with themes to choose from. It was’nt the easiest piece of software to use but after you figured out the quirks that needed to be worked with instead of against, it was easy enough to get things done. After discovering Joomla was going to be too much of what I needed for my personal site, I came across a piece of software called WordPress. I can’t remember exactly how I discovered it but after installing it for the first time and trying to edit a theme, I decided it was too difficult to work with. I decided to go back to Joomla but after trying to install a commenting system while adding features that WordPress came with by default became frustrating aggravation, I gave WordPress a second try and that’s when the light bulbs started flickering.
Looking back at those first few days of using WordPress, the software itself was not difficult to use but figuring out where to go to get plugins, themes, support, and documentation was. These were the days when I had to manually upload plugins to the wp-content folder in order to install them, same for themes. In order to add functionality from plugins into themes, I generally had to add functions with parameters to the theme files for where I wanted that functionality to show up such as single.php or page.php. Upgrading the software was somewhat easy but not convenient. I didn’t become comfortable with WordPress until I started editing themes. This is how I discovered what functions were and how parameters worked. What was weird chunks of code suddenly became stuff I could play around with without the fear of breaking the site. For me personally, the learning curve was very shallow and that was during the pre 2.3 days.
Graph Is Based On Personal Experience From The First Time I Used Each Platform
Fast forward to WordPress 3.2. Users for the most part do not need to use FTP to install WordPress, Themes, or plugins nor do they need to use it for upgrading. If WordPress is installed via Fantastico or some other method that doesn’t require the editing of code or the manual uploading of files, there is very little in the way of difficulty encountered before they see the WordPress Dashboard for the first time. It’s impossible for me to determine what the learning curve for WordPress is for new users because that’s a perspective I’ve lost and can never quite regain. However, if I had to take a guess, it would be becoming acquainted with the WordPress interface and figuring out which buttons and menus take you where and do what. Thankfully, the contextual Help tab in WordPress is helping to ease the discomfort of learning the system.
At the end of the day, I believe that WordPress had a shallow learning curve when I used the system for the first time and since then, that curve has become closer to being flattened.
Here is where I need your help. If you could, please describe to me in the comments or in a blog post on your site describing the learning curve you faced when you used WordPress for the first time. For some, it’s been ages ago but I’m really interested in hearing stories from those who are brand new to the software or started using it since 3.0. I’m equally interested to hear from those that used WordPress and decided it was just too difficult to use and decided to use another piece of software to accomplish the task.
BuiltWith Trends is an analytics company that provides weekly updated free information about the most popular technologies used on the web such as advertising, frameworks, ecommerce and content management systems. Their CMS page lists the distribution of popular CMS solutions across the top million, top one-hundred thousand, and top ten-thousand websites. It should be no surprise that WordPress takes the majority of the pie in each section but amongst the three different categories, there is something that I find interesting. For instance, amongst the top 100,000 websites, Vbulletin has a 3.42% share while amongst the top 10,000 websites, it has a 9.35% share. Amongst the top one million sites, Drupal has a share of 2.82% but within the top 10,000 websites, has a share of 23.33%.
These numbers change on a weekly basis as their stats update but what this shows me is that there could be a lot of people using a particular CMS but that doesn’t necessarily translate into those sites having high traffic. I’m pretty impressed to see that WordPress powers practically half of the top 10,000 websites recorded by BuiltWith Trends. It’s also worthy of noting that Drupal commands just about a quarter of those sites showcasing that systems ability to handle massive websites.
One thing that can be frustrating at times to talk about regarding WordPress, is what should be added to the core. I equate it to kids fighting with their parents. They want something and are explaining every which way as to why it would be a good thing for them to have and the parents dish out variations of NO. I’ve participated in my fair share of cool conversations that were abruptly ended with the words Patches Welcome or There’s A Plugin For That. I don’t know which one is more of a conversation killer as they seem equal to me but I’m sure I’ve heard the Plugin line more than the Patches Welcome. If neither of the poll choices suits you, feel free to add-on in the comments what you think are good WordPress conversation killers.
What's The Quickest Way To End A Conversation About WordPress?
Freedom is a complicated, annoying, thing, and sometimes having a freedom means you accept the consequences of that freedom. In the US, we have freedom of speech, which means we can bitch about our government if we want to. But that also means someone else, who has the polar opposite of your views, has the exact same right you do. And I will defend that person with my dying breath that they have that right, no matter how much I detest what they’re saying.
You have to keep that in perspective when you start talking about rights and legality. WooThemes had the legal right to do what they did. That doesn’t mean you don’t get to think that it was a dick move, and you may, but what it was, was 100% above-board. They were honest about it, and it was legal. The GPL affords us the freedom to make plugins, fork WordPress if we wanted, and do what we want, so long as we don’t restrict the freedoms even more.
If you’re still looking for a book to help you learn the basics of both the self hosted version of WordPress and WordPress.com, The Complete Idiot’s Guide To WordPress might be for you. Pierre DeBois over at SmallBizTrends has given his review of the book and from his perspective, it looks like a good read that sets the foundation to excel with WordPress.
Joost de Valk has published a code snippet along with an explanation regarding the reduction of memory usage when using get_permalink with post objects. This may come in handy for plugin developers who are not already using this technique. ∞
WPCandy has announced that they have launched a new service called Pressed Ads. While WPCandy was initially surviving ad free thanks to their Powered By System, reality has sunk in. Their powered by system will now be going in two directions, one for their readers and one for businesses. The unique advertising network will be centered around WordPress centric products and services while also being invite only for advertisers and publishers. It looks like the goal is to have Pressed Ads show up on the most influential WordPress sites which will provide extremely high relevancy with regards to the type of advertising that will be displayed on those sites through the network. Since the beginning of the year, the powered by system, has enabled Ryan to work on WPCandy full time which is amazing in and of itself.
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