Displaying 1 To 18 Of 18 Comments Three Plugins To Monitor Site Uptime I’ve been using Watchmouse for months, works perfect! » Posted By John On July 1, 2012 @ 11:02 PM WordPress Optimization Guide By Dreamhost @Otto – I’d love to see a tutorial on how you’ve set up W3 Total Cache. Seems like there are a zillion options with W3 and so I’d love to see the choices you made. » Posted By John On December 12, 2011 @ 1:32 AM How eMusic Transitioned From Clunky CMS To WordPress @John -Comments Posted By John
Update: There’s still been no response by eMusic to the message board thread I reported above, begun by a blind user saying:
…I access the web and other applications with the keyboard and a screen reading software program called JAWS. Since the upgrade and new look, I have not had any success downloading any music and find navigation very difficult. I have contacted support about some of these issues in the past and they acknowledge issues but accessibility problems seem to just get worse.
Did WordPress or the developers ruin eMusic for this disabled user? Regardless, Richard Caccappolo and his people seem largely deaf and dumb to this thread. Among the 47 (and counting) replies to this post are many complaints by other subscribers with less severe visual impairments. I don’t suppose anyone can make a business care about its customers, especially a minority with special needs. There should be a law! Oh wait — I think there is! (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, eg., regarding business web sites, see the National Federation for the Blind v. Target at Disability Rights Advocates). What do WordPress advocates say about this problem? Is it really so hard to address?
» Posted By John On December 12, 2011 @ 1:02 AM
Speaking of communication, Jeffro, or rather lack thereof, consider this sad thread on the eMusic forum, Are there any other blind users of eMusic having difficulty …, by a subscriber who’d been happily using eMusic since 2004. Since posting this plea Nov 18 (nearly 3 weeks ago), there have been 39 sympathetic replies by other subscribers but NONE from eMusic support! Is this what web development is supposed to be about – Richard Caccappolo picking the pocket of a loyal blind customer while bragging (here and elswhere),
…WordPress sped up the performance of the site, which is good for everybody. We’re looking forward to expanding the number of content contributors.Well, it’s not been good for everybody. He then has the audicity to warn the rest of you poor dumb web executives and developers,
We’ve read plenty of horror stories about scaling and sites crashing. You should know your own needs and perform your own evaluation to decide what is right for your business.I’d laugh if it weren’t so sad. Someone should care more about what their customers need! Isn’t that good for business?
» Posted By John On December 7, 2011 @ 4:25 AM
Indeed, Emusic IS a great case study of how to botch the resign of a site and destroy a business. I really cannot believe how clueless some techie fanboys can be! Have you seen the result? We shall see what happens, but it’s beginning to look like this case study should be retitled “How eMusic Transitioned From Clunky CMS To Bankruptcy”.
TECHNICAL SKILL ≠ INTELLIGENCE DESIGN — and a good web site requires both.
I suspect that this disaster will give WordPress bad press, even though the carpenters and architects, not their tools, really deserve the blame. Go to the eMusic message board and see for yourself (https://www.emusic.com/messageboard/TopicBrowse.html).» Posted By john On December 5, 2011 @ 11:53 PM
Pet Peeve – Akismet Configuration Link Location
And for the love of God, please rename “Akismet Configuration” to just “Akismet” so it doesn’t take 2 lines when it is selected.
» Posted By john On March 23, 2011 @ 5:46 AM
Cutline Dropped On WordPress.com In Favor Of Coraline
The problem I have is that I’d bet 99% of users had no idea who originally created Cutline and which company was currently its owner. They wanted a them that fit their needs. If Cutline met that need, who is it for WordPress to come in and tell them that they have to switch, and switch within 96 hours. I understand that WordPress.com can be run as the owners see fit and such an event is the risk you take joining that kind of service, but c’mon, talk about screwing your users. Hopefully they’ll learn from this and the PressRow transition will go more smoothly.
» Posted By John On August 11, 2010 @ 4:08 PM
Thesis Goes Split Licensed – Hell Freezes Over
You need to catch up – this particular incident has moved beyond the old arguments about whether a theme makes sufficient use of WordPress code for the GPL to apply, that all became moot when it became clear that actual code had been copied and pasted into Chris’ product. That is the basis on which Matt was going to sue,
Just because this particular incident has moved beyond derivative doesn’t negate the argument as a whole. You are calling those who would dare release a theme under a non-GPL license parasites. I was simply explaining how you’re wrong as they have solid legal footing for such a stance.
» Posted By John On July 26, 2010 @ 8:27 AM
The GPL, designed to fight the parasitic coders who want to take and not give back, is a perfect example of that.
The GPL is an extension of copyright, and is not designed to “fight the parasitic coders”. It’s designed to promote and advance community improvement of software. It only requires that if you modify and redistribute the software, that you do so under the same terms that allowed you to do what you did. Chris and many others feel that a theme does not modify core WordPress code, and as such, his theme would not need to be distributed under the GPL. There is a very legitimate argument to be made for such a stance, and neither Chris, nor anyone else, should be penalized or deemed a parasite for taking that stance.
he has, finally, come into compliance with the license, probably only because he was caught red-handed with chunks of stolen code and would have been destroyed in court
People can steal GPL’d code? WordPress could still sue DIYThemes for the previous violations as I’d bet the GPL’d code was present in versions prior to 1.7, but I be surprised if that happened. Chris certainly didn’t change his license to make things go away. By changing the license, he limits his potential liability.
If you want to hate on Chris because he acted immature at times, then fine, but don’t forget Matt and his behavior. And don’t hate on him simply because he would not cave to the heavy pressure exerted on the dev community by WordPress and for deciding to do what he thought was legal and in his best interest.
» Posted By John On July 23, 2010 @ 5:01 PM
It’s my opinion that if a developer creates a theme or plugin that is not licensed under the GPL like the platform it works on and is used by millions of people, that is a slap in the face to everyone who has contributed to the project
As much as GPL is about “freedom”, it’s also about copyrights. IANAL, but no matter how the WordPress system absorbs theme code at runtime, I don’t see how that changes who owns the written code. If I write a theme, it is my original work. I own the copyright to that work, and so long as I have not used any original code that was written under a different license (legally speaking, calling functions would not count as using original code), then I should have the right to license and distribute my work however I wish.
That is not a slap in the face to anyone in the community, and to use one’s position in the community to openly bash someone who dares to have a view that isn’t in line with what they feel the community should be doing is low. Chris did himself no favors throughout this whole mess, and he knows that. Matt, to me, did worse by himself. His actions sent a chilling message to the community that if you don’t tow the WordPress line, be prepared to get dragged through the mud.
naive userbase who doesn’t know jack about licenses
How much do you want to bet that most WordPress theme devs fit that description perfectly when this whole GPL thing got started?
» Posted By John On July 23, 2010 @ 9:00 AM
What To Do Or Consider After You Enable Multisite In WordPress
Word of caution, if you’re using multisite on a shared hosting account (which isn’t considered a best practice and as your site gains traffic, you’ll want to make the move to a VPS) you may be required to manually add a “parked domain” for each new domain a user wants to use. The domain mapping plugin will match your users domain name to their specific subdomain on your WordPress installation.
No, this won’t work in every case. You can park a domain in cpanel ONLY on top your MAIN cpanel domain.
That means if you did not install WordPress multi user under your main cpanel domain, then don’t park the domain you want to add to your network, because it won’t work!
Instead, do this: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/cpanel/how-to-park-a-domain-on-an-addon-domain
Every blog post which discuss the domain mapping plugin forget to mention this, and this drive a lot of people nuts.
» Posted By John On July 9, 2010 @ 1:23 PM
WPMU Premium Now The PremiumPress
Premiun Press themes are FRAUD, They don’t work and once we purchased the theme we are totally ignored and their SUPPORT is BAD. Themes does not function correctly. No proper installation documents and so many missing pages and codes.
» Posted By John On June 25, 2010 @ 7:51 AM
WPWeekly Episode 77 – WordCamp New York Pre-Game
Good show. I’m getting really pumped for WordCamp NYC!
» Posted By John On October 28, 2009 @ 9:27 AM
Vote For WordCamp New York Logo
I liked 33 (and 32, but I voted for the former) because they’d look pretty sweet on a T-Shirt or a badge, and the pictoral/street map theme is a nice departure from the large skyline/Statue of Liberty concepts a lot of the (very nicely done) other entries aim for.
» Posted By John On September 3, 2009 @ 6:10 PM
WordCamp Hitting The Big Apple
I’ll be there, too. Looking forward to meeting other WordPress folks in person.
» Posted By John On August 31, 2009 @ 9:22 AM
Ask Jeff: Is The Submit A Post Link A Plugin?
For contact form 7 to work, does the email address specified in the template have to be the same as the domain name the word press site is attached too?
Thanks John
» Posted By John On December 16, 2009 @ 5:56 PM
@beachbum
Thanks for your reply. I read the description of that plugin and it looks like it allows you to set the “From” line for emails which actually isn’t a problem for me. The emails arrive ok with the “From” field filled out correctly. However, when I click reply, the “To” field gets changed to noreply@sitedomain.com. I’m wondering if that plugin will take care of the problem for me even though I didn’t read any mention of it in the description.
» Posted By John On May 4, 2010 @ 10:42 PM
«« Back To Stats Page@Adam – I’m having a similar problem except I get the email correctly. However, when I click on reply (using Gmail), the “To:” field gets filled with noreply@sitedomain.com. Is there a way to make it so the email of the sender gets filled in that field instead of the noreply?
» Posted By John On May 4, 2010 @ 3:30 AM