Displaying 1 To 18 Of 18 Comments VaultPress – Not An Option For Non-Profit MultiSite Installations? We do a two tier approach to backing up sites: 1. We have our hosts back up our servers daily to a local store. For number 2 you can use custom scripts of systems like SiteVault. Either way, the costs quickly come down. VaultPress is terrific value if you have one or two sites on WP. But if you have a lot of sites it does look rather expensive. It’s also time consuming if you need to repair a large multi-sites instance of WP. The other big advantage of VaultPress is that it requires few skills to work with, whereas our approach demands some understanding of servers, hosting and DBs. That knowledge costs money. We have it, but some people don’t – for them VaultPress is a sweet solution. » Posted By David Coveney On April 16, 2012 @ 6:40 AM One Way To Make WordPress Less Portable Incidentally, although JSON is a better format to handle, it’s still language locked. Another thing worth noting is that WP isn’t strictly a true DB app. It uses the DB as a data store, rather than leveraging the capabilities of database engines to manage performance, security and so on. Consequently you can’t fully apply good DB theory or practice to it. » Posted By David Coveney On April 12, 2012 @ 9:46 AM Data should be separated from the language forms that use it. ie, no language specific data should appear in a DB, because when other languages hook into that DB they can’t handle all of the data. This is a simple and often ignored rule in the creation of databases :-) But WP’s schema dates back to simpler times, MySQL 4 and a need to work well on slow DBs at low cost providers – that was more of a priority than pure DB theory. Also because of the way Web apps have to work, using the DB as a sort of variable store isn’t unusual and it’s sort of OK so long as other things aren’t going to have to work with that data. WP isn’t exactly spot on with that – the text widget, for example, stores data in a serialised string, which is a bit mad, hence why we wrote the Spots plugin. Anyway, we run into this all the time, and years ago I created a script to help with migrations and doing a safe search and replace on a DB: http://interconnectit.com/124/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/ does the trick, gets downloaded a hundred or so times a day, so must have something going for it :-) » Posted By David Coveney On April 12, 2012 @ 9:42 AM Phoning Home To Plugin Authors We did some analysis on this a while back: http://interconnectit.com/1722/who-is-wordpress-talking-to/ – some seems not too sinister, but you do have to remember that there’s little in the way of protection of the data sent, and that somewhere there is possibly a big goldmine of install data that isn’t being shared with anybody. Due to the relative opacity of the organisations behind WP there’s no real easy answer – we can’t see in very easily to anything other than the code. Somebody will fork WP one day or another, if only to address the concerns that are required for enterprise use. That sensitive content posted to an Intranet site could find itself elsewhere (for example when using the Google API for spell checking) is a big concern. It’s perfectly valid to question these things and to look into the potential impacts for different groups of users. It may not matter if you’re a blogger in NYC but it may matter a lot to an activist in Cuba or an internal communications team at a government agency. » Posted By David Coveney On February 17, 2012 @ 8:48 AM My Experience In Running A WordPress Meetup Here in Liverpool we’ve been running a local group called SWIG for nearly a year now. Every month on the last Thursday, like yours. What we learned quickly was that a regular schedule and location is important. Then it’s all about promotion and making it interesting enough for all attendees. So we pitch our chat and talks at different levels and have Q&A sessions where more experienced experts can help out. Numbers wise we typically get 14 to 24 attendees. And now this month we have our first bigSWIG – http://interconnectit.com/3161/bigswig/ which is a paid for event, a little like a WordCamp in that we have speakers, but without the WordCamp overhead. We have space for 120 people (at a squeeze) but will be happy if 60 or so attend. From the sales so far I expect is to easily make this. But it’s a heck of a change from free to paid for – you have to work harder on getting the right speakers, the venue, and the facilities. We’ll be streaming the event life as well, so you guys on t’other side of t’Atlantic can watch for free :-) » Posted By David Coveney On January 9, 2012 @ 7:59 AM Should WordPress Change The Blog Nomenclature Within The Backend? What I like about Otto is that he doesn’t care if he annoys you or not – he gives you his straight, unfiltered opinion. Wish I could be more like that :-) » Posted By David Coveney On November 5, 2009 @ 1:11 PM Yes, getting rid of the blog nomenclature would really help the job of selling the system in for the many roles it has. Don’t forget, it’s the decision makers, not the techies, that need to be made to understand the capabilities… » Posted By David Coveney On November 3, 2009 @ 7:30 PM @Ryan – seriously scary? That suggests you’re stressed about it. In other words, WP is causing you stress. Which means, perhaps, it’s not the right tool? Heaven knows, coding for the web, with all its weaknesses and attacks, is hard enough already. We can do without more hassle in our lives. » Posted By David Coveney On September 7, 2009 @ 11:03 AM You do all realise that regardless of who is right or wrong the pain of running a site on WP may push people away? I think support of two versions back would be a good thing… keep 2.6 supported, and 2.7 supported, for example, and there’d be a lot less complaining going on. » Posted By David Coveney On September 7, 2009 @ 6:31 AM Which Theme Company Has The Best Word Of Mouth? Heh – I saw Adii asking fans to vote, so decided to do similar and… look, there we go. Now if I just had 10x as many followers on Twitter I guess we could do better. But it’s interesting to see that one of the key tricks to marketing is just, you know… asking. » Posted By David Coveney On September 3, 2009 @ 9:15 AM @Benjamin – that’s great to hear you’re pleased with us, thank you :-) » Posted By David Coveney On September 2, 2009 @ 7:30 AM Nice to get mentioned, but clearly we have to stop being so terribly English about promotion and get out there a bit more. Then again, theme development has had to take a pause. Many thousands of downloads, but very little money coming in. Not enough people want or need support, and those that do have a nasty habit of e-mailing in or just commenting on themes. And I’m being too nice in humouring them. Our corporate stuff over at Interconnect IT, however, is doing very nicely. » Posted By David Coveney On September 2, 2009 @ 7:27 AM How Do I Contribute To Commercial GPL Themes? Well, with ours you just download them, for free, make your changes and let us know. We’ve already had a translation to German plus enhancements to Evening Sun which has been implemented back into core, and some other minor contributions. People who contribute something that we see as significant may be rewarded in several different ways. I guess with other clubs where you have to pay to download you have to find another source if you want to contribute without paying. On the other hand, simply by paying you’re contributing, if indirectly. We could do with more subscribers simply to pay for future development – writing and supporting themes for free download is expensive and time consuming and ultimately we have rent to pay. If it wasn’t for our custom work (which was doing fine even before Spectacu.la started) then we’d be hungry boys. » Posted By David Coveney On July 9, 2009 @ 4:49 AM WordPress 2.7 User Guide In PDF Thanks Jeffro for giving this some attention. I appreciate what you’re saying about image quality, but with so many of them it’s hard to keep down the download size and consequent bandwidth costs. I hope people enjoy it, and constructive feedback will, of course, be very welcome! » Posted By David Coveney On May 26, 2009 @ 11:29 AM My career prior to WordPress involved implementing regulatory documents into code. Tax regulations, employment regulations, etc. One thing I learned, early on, is that while code can’t be ambiguous, legal documents often are. I used to spend an awful lot of time seeking clarification. With the GPL, because of vested interests, there’s no easy way to receive clarification so instead you have to make up your own interpretation – but it’s an ambiguous and unclear document when applied to non-compiled code. Different lawyers will give different opinions, but they are really just that – and the quality of that opinion will vary according to the time those lawyers have. I know that a large client who is implementing WP was worried about whether it allowed others to ‘steal’ their copyright work – for example, if the code was leaked (accidentally or otherwise) could somebody, in effect, legally reproduce their site’s functionality and design. The answer is a straightforward NO. In essence, the GPL does not force you into rescinding your copyright, nor is it anything like as infectious as people think. » Posted By David Coveney On May 24, 2009 @ 8:52 AM It’s worth noting that we didn’t go GPL because of the legal issues – we knew there were none – but because of community issues. It’s important to us to be accepted as a part of the community. In fact, I’d have much preferred it if arguments had revolved around community involvement more than legal or contractual issues. What Beagle points out so succintly is that a lot of legal speak really is a load of crap and a lot of sabre rattling. I don’t like it, but that’s the world we live in. » Posted By David Coveney On May 22, 2009 @ 1:20 PM I doubt we’ll make much money, to be honest :-) The upside is that bandwidth costs are, in effect, subsidised by Automattic if all your themes are on their repository, which helps. Similarly, we’ll benefit from the point when theme installs are fully automatic from the back-end – I suspect that will only support the repository, just like the plugins system is today. » Posted By David Coveney On April 9, 2009 @ 11:34 AM I’m not sure you can say that we’ve decided to abide by the GPL – that would suggest that we were in contravention of it before. There are many folk arguing on both sides of this. However, the view within the WordPress community is that a theme should be GPL. It’s not actually important whether the community is right or wrong – if we want to be a part of a community that feels strongly about something then it’s important for us to share those values. And that’s why we’ve decided to apply the GPL to our themes. I’m not convinced it’s going to bring us riches – it didn’t appear to work for Brian Gardner and although his themes are GPL now, they’re no longer freely available. This appears to have caused repercussions – I see that his work is no longer promoted by WordPress.org – so it’s clear that if you want the support of the community it’s important to make all your themes freely available and stick to a service based offering for the chargeable element. Whether that’s viable for smaller businesses, I don’t know. Guess we’ll find out :-) » Posted By David Coveney On April 9, 2009 @ 8:03 AMComments Posted By David Coveney
2. We run a system that grabs all files and the DB and keeps a copy on our office server.
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