Displaying 1 To 30 Of 128 Comments HostGator Now Has QuickInstall I seem to remember HostGator being fingered in quite a few plugin support forums, along with Godaddy, as being a particularly problematic host. What Chris says about WP Super Cache being pre-activated is, however, very promising, it suggests that they finally sat down and really thought about how they can accommodate all their WordPress users. It is crazy that more hosts don’t do this; WordPress usage is exploding and they could save themselves endless support and security headaches if they hired WordPress experts to consult on the best possible WordPress “recipe” for their particular setup. WordPress has gone way beyond being just another one of a hundred or so arcane Fantastico applications that hosting customers might, just possibly, want to install, it is now one of the main ways in which people choose to create websites. Fantastico should be avoided, it is a complete dog, if you are under any illusions about the type of company you would be trusting your installation to, just visit their website. It was all the rage ten years ago but Netenberg, despite all the money they have raked in, seem to have put zero effort into improving it, adding features or keeping their install libraries even vaguely up-to-date. Hosts only offer fantastico out of a combination of laziness, inertia and the fact that so many customers got it into their heads, years ago, that it is a must-have feature. Installatron, offered by an increasing number of the better hosts, is a far superior option, even out-of-the-box, but is also highly customizable, wonderful if you do a lot of installs and want to automate essential post-installation tasks such as changing permissions, deleting Hello Dolly etc. The very best way to install WordPress, however, remains doing it yourself, possibly with the help of a good, up-to-date tutorial if it is your first time. WordPress installs so easily, I can’t see, for the life of me, how that is really that much harder than using Fantastico and ending up with an insecure installation that doesn’t set the permissions correctly for automatic upgrades. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On August 13, 2010 @ 10:25 PM Looking For Guest Posts For September Or perhaps I could just spread some entertaining rumors. For instance, did you know that Jane Wells and Chris Pearson are now dating? » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On August 13, 2010 @ 10:33 PM So, could these guest posts be used to just randomly attack other people in the community? » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On August 13, 2010 @ 10:28 PM SilverLight Application For Exploring WordPress Hooks @Ipstenu – pressing the letters Z, X, C or V was invoking the associated cmd action for those keys (i.e. copying for C, pasting for V) without my pressing on the cmd key. I thought it might be some sort of Silverlight quirk but I just checked and it’s no longer happening. Thanks for drawing my attention back to it. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On August 9, 2010 @ 7:30 PM Could be very useful but text entry behaves very strangely on Chrome, Safari and Firefox on OS X, even with the latest version of Silverlight installed and the browsers restarted. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On August 8, 2010 @ 4:12 PM Thesis Goes Split Licensed – Hell Freezes Over @John – I agree, I was speaking about this specific incident, I don’t understand why people are blurring it with the more general argument of derivative or dependent code. I try not to argue about that anymore, waste of time, the most productive people in the community have made their feelings clear, we should respect their wishes, there is something parasitical and scavenger-like in the attitude of the people who invest so much of their time in campaigning against WordPress but I would rather spend my time coding than arguing the point, nobody is going to talk them out of their sense of entitlement, it would be like trying to explain ethics to George W. Bush. Anyway, I think this thread is cooked, my last comment only appeared recently because it contained a link and was, therefore, held in the moderation queue for a couple of days, I didn’t mean to resurrect this zombie. Peace and love, everyone. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On July 26, 2010 @ 8:43 AM Eh no. 4 people contributed more than 50% of the patches for WP 3.0. Yeah, and they did so on the basis that anyone who want to build upon their code and distribute the results would be subject to the same license. The vast majority of users do not build upon or re-distribute WordPress code but, when they do, they are subject to the license. As for your “no its not” response on the nature of the GPL, seriously, I am not going to take lessons on Open Source licenses from a self-confessed affiliate marketer; please note my reference, above, to parasites of all types and all levels of scumminess. I have noticed your vicious little stabs against WordPress in comments elsewhere online, you probably feel that this crusade is a smart way to market yourself. Before you completely sell your soul, however, you might rethink the road you have taken and consider some gentle advice from of the much-missed Bill Hicks. You can’t ‘steal’ something that’s already been given to you. Misuse and exploit, yes. Steal, no. Apart from that, your comment is the best illustration of the Marxist nature of the GPL I’ve seen so far. Actually, you’re wrong: under current U.S. law, it is theft to use software or various other media outside the terms of the license under which it is distributed – I would link to the Wikipedia article on the DMCA but using 2 links in a comment kicks it into the moderation queue. Beyond deeply flawed American legislation, however, there is the simple principle that if someone offers you their work on the clear condition that you do something and you take their work but you fail to do that thing, that is theft. Caveman A says to Caveman B, I will lend you my arrows for the hunt as long as you share your catch with the rest of the tribe, Caveman B uses the arrows but later refuses to share his catch = theft. You don’t have to like the GPL but it does have the virtue of being extremely clear: if you don’t want to share the deer you catch, don’t use those arrows. @John - Chris and many others feel that a theme does not modify core WordPress code 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, he said as much in Jeff’s “Where is Matt” interview, nothing to do with the far vaguer , more general argument you allude to. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On July 23, 2010 @ 5:50 PM @Chip Bennett – someone who (aside from the clearly plagiarized copy pasta from WP core) was in no way infringing upon WordPress’ copyright So, someone who was in no way infringing upon WordPress copyright apart from when they were? Why the vitriol, Jeff? WordPress is built upon a principle of sharing and giving back. People who cynically steal code licensed on that understanding are no better than all the other parasites who make life harder for everyone: the spammers who waste so many billions of man-hours every year, shop-lifters who increase the cost of food and goods for families all over the world, mafia hoods who squeeze small businesses until they go bankrupt. Parasites are everywhere and can only be beaten back when honest, hard-working people unite together. The GPL, designed to fight the parasitic coders who want to take and not give back, is a perfect example of that. Chris Pearson was a blatant parasite, he deserves vitriol; 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, but he has now undertaken to stop feeding off the community and that is to be welcomed. It is just a damn shame that Chris had to drag everyone through this first and we are lucky that, when it came to the crunch, we had someone determined and well-resourced enough to face him down. I completely disagree with Matt on some issues such as the P filter (content should be sacrosanct, a CMS has no business secretly interfering with the words the user writes, I am perplexed that anyone could fail to see that) but, in this instance, he has performed a great service to all of us who rely upon the continued health and evolution of WordPress. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On July 23, 2010 @ 4:08 PM VideoPress Undergoes Major Update I’m crossing my fingers that VideoPress will eventually expand into more innovative uses of video – after all these years, no company has offered a simple way for site visitors to leave video comments without first having to jump through the hoop of registering or logging in. I realise that I am in a minority in thinking that video comments are a viable and, in specific use cases, a valuable thing – most people presume that the whole concept is dead in the water because Seesmic and Viddler made such a mess of it, but one day some company will realise that if you lower the barrier to entry sufficiently, and present people with one simple big red record button, the concept will take hold and establish itself as a useful ancillary to text comments. I truly hope that Automattic will be that company. I also agree with Carl and Jeff on HTML5 support – I am astonished at how much I find myself using my iPad, it seems to be a much faster way to work through my RSS feeds and check out new sites, I’m pretty sure that the number of people using these things will rocket once folks get the chance to sit down and try their friends’ or family members’ iPads. I also gather that the new iPhone screen is also excellent for watching video, so, I hope VideoPress will get ahead of the curve and make sure that their users aren’t disappointing a significant percentage of their visitors. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On July 1, 2010 @ 2:37 PM @Dan Cole – Amen to that, a solid reminder of why the GPL is absolutely crucial to the vitality and future growth of WordPress, regardless of the FUD being thrown around by some folks who want to commercially exploit what the community has built but haven’t got the imagination, skills or work ethic necessary to thrive within the terms of the license. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On May 31, 2010 @ 9:41 PM @Ben Cook – Ben, I would hardly describe myself as an Automattic apologist but, seriously, what exactly are they meant to be apologising for? Also, nothing I said was directed at you – to be honest, I hadn’t know about your criticisms of Automattic until checking your site just now and reading your article about why Matt should resign. Frankly, your arguments in that post make very little sense, I agree with the commenters. It is, however, your opinion, you are entitled to as many misguided opinions as you want, I would die defending your right to express them. Of course, my willingness to lay down my life in the defense of your freedom of speech would be contingent on the presumption that you aren’t just adopting controversial positions and using baity headlines to generate traffic. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On May 31, 2010 @ 8:15 PM I’ve long thought that the overblown hostility towards key figures in our community is largely down to a misperception, a fear that there is a tight-knit cabal in charge who look down upon the rest of us, actively ignore our opinions and strive to keep us out of their bright, shiny, cinnamon-smelling world. This fear, of not being part of the “in-crowd’, probably echoing unhappy memories of not being one of the cools kids or the jocks or the cheerleaders in high-school, results in expressions of either slavish hero-worship or outright hostility. Those who choose to be hostile often adopt largely meaningless issues (usually cynically planted by the handful of people with a specific commercial interest in knocking Automatic or the WordPress project) and launch full-frontal, deeply personal attacks, their fury stoked by the belief that they will be ignored anyway. It is always fun to watch their embarrassed climb-down when they DO get a thoughtful, well-reasoned response from, you know, an actual, real-life human being. I really like the WordPress open source project, it has made my life substantially better, it has been interesting to watch its evolution and it is exciting to think about the future possibilities – if you believe in the democratization of publishing and the free movement of ideas, there is nothing more important going on right now. I am very grateful to all the thousands of people who have contributed to the project or to the plugin and theme eco-systems. I am also appreciative of the substantial and ongoing contributions that Automattic and other companies have made to the project and am happy that they have found a way to make that commercially viable. As companies go, Automattic are a great company and my sense is that they are intrinsically decent people, folks I would enjoy meeting even if WordPress had never happened. I have not met Jane. I think we have exchanged a few words on Twitter or blog comments but that is all. I saw her at WordCamp Ireland but didn’t say hello because she already inundated with people but, if I do meet her in the future, I would not expect her to be anything other than a nice, intelligent person who happens to be good at the job of sometimes calling the shots and making decisions. I did get to meet the PollDaddy guys and Donnacha O’Caoimh who was particularly generous with his time, genuinely open and funny about the mad trip that they are all on. He actually shocked me at one point by remembering some random bit of feedback, about premium feature pricing, that I had submitted about a year earlier, just some spur of the moment thoughts submitted via the WordPress.com contact form – they really do listen to us. We all need to remember that these are normal folks who, through hard work, enthusiasm and listening to their users, have found themselves in an extraordinary position, commercially and culturally, but we all own the WordPress project every bit as much as they do. Sure, they benefit financially from their work, but they are not taking anything from any of us, we only gain; attacking someone whose daily efforts benefit you is really dumb. It should go without saying that the open source project is philosophically open, and has attracted passionately open people but Automattic, too, is open, just about as open as a commercial company can be. As individuals, I sense that if I really needed to contact Matt or Toni or Jane or any of the Automattic team, or indeed Mark, Westi, Andrew, Ryan, or any of the designers or contributing developers, I could do so and probably get a reply, even though they don’t know me from Adam. I don’t believe that any of the “celebrities” in the WordPress world actually think of themselves as anything special or better than us, they are regular folks, just like us, probably embarrassed by the hero worship and exasperated, sometimes upset, by the hostility. It would massively improve the quality of the debate around WordPress if people could remember, as they type, that the person you’re attacking is actually a decent soul with interests much in line with your own and you’re going to be bloody embarrassed, as Jayvie was, when you meet them in person. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On May 29, 2010 @ 8:36 PM Touching Base With Nathan Rice At WordCamp Raleigh I agree with Brad, Nathan is one heck of a dev and Genesis is dripping with potential. Thanks for posting this series of videos. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On May 27, 2010 @ 12:07 AM Jonathan Davis Via WordCamp Raleigh Very entertained by the bit, 30 seconds in, when you start blowing raspberries at him – an appropriately subtle comment on the ever-controversial issue of commercial WordPress plugins. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On May 23, 2010 @ 8:55 PM Jason Schuller Did It – I Can Do It To Keep it simple. You already have the right knowledge and interests to help clients make the most of WordPress. You also have exactly the right type of traffic: people looking for WordPress tips and advice. A side panel on every page, drawing attention to your availability as consultant, would result in more work than you could handle. Don’t waste your time on branded merchandise, don’t mess with your audience by introducing any sort of pay wall (no matter how reasonable it may seem in your own head), just keep it simple, connect the pieces you already have and stop over-thinking the problem. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On May 7, 2010 @ 9:49 AM Review Of Outline By ThemeGarden Ok, sorry if you were offended, I guess it was just a case of crossed wires, apologies in particular for writing that you were being a prick, I didn’t mean to get personal. I felt that the statement “Your comment reads like a big, honkin’ promotional ad for StudioPress … let’s try to keep the facts straight and not bend the truth in our favor” suggested, strongly, that I was somehow misrepresenting facts for my own benefit i.e. being a shill. I felt that this was aggressive, that you were starting an argument and that is was important that I defend what I had written. My statement about “putting down your competition” was based upon your statement that two of the four products reviewed by Aaron were not frameworks. The creators of those products, your competitors in a commercial sense, could well interpret that as putting them down. I understand your concern that, although you, personally, did understand what I was saying, you were concerned that others would not. Yes, I accept that I should have been clearer, more exact in what I said – it was, after all, just a hastily typed blog comment – but sloppy phrasing, leading to misunderstanding among some notional others, is a very different thing from what you originally alleged, that I was deliberately “bending the truth”. I agree with you on pricing, people can charge whatever they want, my main criticism of nutty pricing is that it will lead to a car crash situation in which new entrants to the market are charging ridiculous amounts, likely ending up with tiny customer bases with huge expectations and, ultimately, a huge sense that they got screwed. There are plenty of examples of this happening. Instead, I would like people to realize just how profitable the WordPress market could be if they work it’s scale intelligently and price at levels that invite in the masses and discourage piracy – Apple’s Appstore could be considered a good example. Ultimately, I want to see free and open themes and plugins continue to flourish, while those who want to turn it into a fulltime job can do so by charging reasonable prices to large numbers of customers rather than nutty prices to just a handful of idiots and large organizations. Again, sorry to have ruffled your feathers, I have long respected your work and have been following your blog since you were in Korea. Keep up the good work. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 23, 2010 @ 3:33 PM @Justin Tadlock – You’re accusing ME of twisting words? After you suggesting that I was a shill for StudioPress and completely misrepresenting what I wrote, all from a nice high horse while conveniently forgetting to state your own commercialization of WordPress and business interest in putting down your competition? By contrast, I did not twist your words, I merely quoted your allegations against me to explain why they were wrong, your original post is right there for anyone to see. And, no, to point out that you’re actions were prickish is not a personal attack; I did not say that you are a prick but that, in these actions, you were “being a prick”. Big difference. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 23, 2010 @ 2:01 PM Or, a completely alternate route — don’t pay anything at all for themes. There are quality, free themes out there. Oh, c’mon Justin, it’s more than a little hypocritical for you, whose own theme club charges a subscription for full access to support, to attack others for being commercial. I am not saying that, at $25, you don’t over good value, but you certainly aren’t in a position to attack others simply because you’ve chosen to charge for a different part of the overall package. No-one who has ever read any of my comments can accuse me of not supporting free and open over commercial, but we have to recognize that many people are happy to pay certain things for a number of reasons, all of which essentially boil down to the expectation that it will save them, in their own business, time and trouble. Given that a commercial themes market is going to exist, I would much prefer to see it adopt principles that live up to those expectations, rather than simply being a way for scammers to rush in and charge ridiculous amounts for precious little. Your comment reads like a big, honkin’ promotional ad for StudioPress I do not have any vested interest in StudioPress or any theme business; unlike you, I am not making money from themes. I do, however, respect that fact that Brian has never adopted a ridiculous subscription model and that, when he launched under a new brand, he didn’t use it as an excuse to abandon his old developer license holders, he transferred them over to his new site and has continued to provide support and to evolve his products, all for that same initial license cost. This was actually a smart business move because it created a lot of good will and good word-of-mouth that has probably made him a lot more money in the long-run. My use of StudioPress as an example of how commercial theme should be sold is merely another manifestation, an echo of that good will. You mean they will only continue getting updates. Let’s clear that up. The themes, from what I can see on the site, will continue to work after your subscription is up. The chances of a theme not working with a WP upgrade are pretty slim. I have themes I coded for WP 2.3 that I know still work. Work in the sense of still displaying posts in some form? Sure, possibly. Most people who pay money for a theme do so, however, because they want to create a website that will look impressive and up-to-date. Is a theme that hasn’t been updated since 2007 going to include Gravatars? Is it going to be able to take advantage of the new menu system in 3.1? You say that there is only a slim chance that a WP upgrade will break a theme but there is no way that you or anyone can know for sure. If a situation does arise in which a segment of WP users stop upgrading because they want to keep their existing theme but don’t want to pay an ongoing subscription, well, that makes WordPress as a whole less secure, more of a target. Simply as a matter of security, it would be better if commercial theme sellers adopted the approach of selling upgrades as an integral part of the theme cost, undertaking to support that theme for a reasonable lifetime of, say, 3 or 4 years. Of four leading “commercial” frameworks, two of which I wouldn’t even consider frameworks. Yes, I accept that I made a mistake in leaving out the word “commercial”. As for two of the four not being frameworks, however, I think Aaron wrote a good, detailed review and, as such, I am willing to accept his definition of what is and is not a framework. If you disagree with his definition, why not write your own comparative review and contribute to the ongoing discussion instead of bitterly sniping from the sidelines? …let’s try to keep the facts straight and not bend the truth in our favor. Seriously, you’re being a prick. I am not “bending” the truth, you know exactly what I meant, sorry that I didn’t get a team of lawyers to double-check every word before I pressed Submit, sorry my comment didn’t make it past your pedantic and notably hypocritical sensors. I am bending nothing in my favor; unlike you, I don’t have any skin in this game, there is no “my favor”, my only interest is in not seeing innocent WordPress users get skinned by predatory pricing strategies. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 23, 2010 @ 12:14 PM @Alex Mansfield – Yeah, you’re right, both of Woo’s all-theme packages work out a lot more expensive, although I would not agree that what I am saying is “false”. Rather, I should have said that Jason is giving far less value, ridiculously less from a competitive perspective. The last thing I want to do is to defend Woo’s pricing – I decided not to buy one of their developer licenses because their prices are set too high and they’ve never run a compelling discount offer such as halving the upfront fee – but it is important to recognise that they do offer something that ThemeGarden cannot. At the level of developer licenses, the market consists primarily of Web designers who want to be able to make one big purchase and receive a large, varied set of themes upon which they can build all their sites. In order to save money and limit the amount of stuff they have to learn, most are going to choose just one company to buy a license from and, 99% of the time, they’re going to opt for the one that offers a broad, varied selection, something that they imagine will allow them to build up a varied portfolio of their own. From that perspective, I would argue that Woo’s 65 existing themes, by many different designers, the 2 new themes every month and the new framework, represent a far better investment than Jason’s 2 themes and promise of one more per month. I would also argue that, while Jason does have a striking and slick style, there isn’t enough variation between his themes – unless the potential customer is going to be producing endless sites based around video or photos, they simply won’t be able to build their entire business around a ThemeGarden developer license and, at $500 (or $275 for one year), that is what they will want. So, yes, I was wrong in straightforward money terms, I was thinking more of StudioPress’ developer license, but, if you take value into consideration, ThemeGarden is far worse than even Woo. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 21, 2010 @ 4:37 AM Jeff – you recommend these themes to your users but did not explain why you think they are worth the astonishingly high price. In fact, you did not even mention the price, despite the fact that Jason is establishing a significantly different pricing strategy from the current norm, in which you buy a theme and are entitled to updates, for that particular theme, for life (or for at least as many years as the theme is still being sold). Good commercial theme sellers provide those occasional updates so that the themes continue to work as WordPress gradually changes but ThemeGarden customers will only continue to have working themes if they keep buying subscriptions. I am surprised you didn’t take the opportunity to discuss this new approach to customers, surely it would be of interest to your readers? What makes the subscriptions truly obscene is that Jason is charging far more than long-established sellers, with a good track record, who offer extensive libraries of themes in varied styles, built on clever frameworks, as opposed to ThemeGarden’s TWO themes that, frankly, are more than a little reminiscent of all Jason’s other designs at his previous business, Press75. I never thought I would come across pricing more ridiculous than iThemes $500 All-Access packages (I like iThemes but, with that pricing, Cory handed the premium theme market to StudioPress and WooThemes) but at least iThemes give you unlimited lifetime use of their 30 existing themes,the Builder framework and whatever other themes the team there ever add to their collection. The same $500 at ThemeGarden will only give you a 5 years of upgrades for the 2 themes so far plus whatever else Jason, as just one guy, manages to finish during those 5 years. Another contrast is StudioPress’ collection of 23 great-looking themes, 13 of which have already been transitioned over to the Genesis Framework, which received an enthusiastic review in Aaron Brazell’s detailed comparative review, a fortnight ago, of the four leading frameworks. Each child theme is only $25 on top of the $50 framework (which you buy only once), and you receive lifetime updates for both the framework and any child themes you buy. Alternatively, you can pay $250 for lifetime updates for all current and future StudioPress themes. Most importantly, regardless of whether you buy one theme or a lifetime membership, there are no dumb, unenforceable limits on how many sites you can use the themes on. It is Jason’s business, he can charge what he wants and customers are perfectly free not to buy if they think he is charging too much but you, Jeff, as a reviewer, should be looking at it from the consumer’s perspective and not politely ignoring the elephant in the room. It also gives unrealistic expectations to all the designers and developers who are following your current series of podcasts on commercial themes and plugins – if they are considering selling their own work and they see that even themes at those crazy prices receive your recommendation, it’s going to give them nutty expectations of how high they can pitch their own prices and, ultimately, that will kill their businesses faster than anything else. Whatever Jason is smoking, you shouldn’t be encouraging newbie sellers to take a toke from the same pipe. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 20, 2010 @ 11:11 PM Who’s Right? Network Solutions Or Matt The could call them “Canonical” hosts… LOL » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 14, 2010 @ 11:50 PM Perhaps the WordPress Foundation could offer hosts “Got a Clue” certification and a directory listing, based upon whether the environment they provide meets certain minimum standards of security and sanity. In return for a small donation to the foundation, a foundation volunteer could carry out some basic checks and, in instances in which the environment is not up to spec, they could give the host guidance on what they need to improve. I’m not saying that such a scheme would be easy to institute but it would do a lot to improve the experience that regular users have with WordPress. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 14, 2010 @ 8:16 PM Fair enough, I do bash shared hosting, but only because, in the course of my work, I come across so many companies who either don’t know how to make the jump to more reliable hosting or simply don’t know that they should, that it would fix a lot of problems, ranging from uptime to speed to security. In the case of this post, which you titled so provocatively, I felt it was directly relevant to point out the intrinsically scum-baggish nature of the shared hosting industry because they are the ones throwing mud here, not Matt. Unfortunately, because so many sites derive income from shared hosting affiliate links, the pitfalls of shared hosting don’t get much attention but, again, it is directly relevant to the subject of your post. That underpaid clueless kid would most likely be me and I wouldn’t know half of what that kid would know. Believe it or not, keeping a server secure isn’t so much about what you know, it is about whether or not you care and, let’s face it, no-one is ever going to care as much about your site as you yourself. These days, keeping a server secure is just so much easier, so much less arcane than even a couple of years ago – the improvements in WHM/CPanel and the quality of tutorials online puts running a server at much the same level as being proficient with WordPress i.e. understanding how to fix basic problems and knowing where to look for answers when you don’t have them yourself. Despite the “Joe Everyman” persona you adopt to help make WordPress more accessible to your readers and listeners, it is clear that you are one smart cookie, running a server would be a snap for you, not at all the time-consuming nightmare you imagine. In fact, I’ve often wondered if, at some point, you were going to parlay the reputation you’ve built up into some sort of WordPress-related business. I remember, a while ago, you expressed your frustration of having to juggle your website and podcast commitments with your real-world job, you even flirted with the idea of charging for access to your forum. Your current fascination with the premium end of things suggests that you are at least thinking about getting your hands dirty with PHP, getting some sort of product out there. Have you considered, though, that offering WordPress hosting would be a much quicker route? I mean, you would have to sit down and learn a few things but, I know from listening to you discuss WordPress, you’ve got a sharp grasp of detail, you could get up to speed with WHM/CPanel in just a few days and, with a good server company behind you to handle anything non-WHM, you would be all set. Seriously, when it comes to WordPress, you already know more than the vast majority of hosting companies out there. For instance, there is one company that I’m sure we’ve all noticed, they market themselves as specifically WordPress hosting, but they actually know incredibly little, all their installations of WordPress are just regular, non-modified Fantastico installs, with all the baggage and security problems that entails. You, on the other hand, know pretty much all there is to know about WordPress – you might not know how to write a plugin, but you know all the ins-and-outs that it is important to know, you are already wired into the ongoing evolution, the ups and downs of WordPress, it’s something that you obviously have a great interest in – the vast majority of human beings do not. If I didn’t already know how to manage my WordPress installations, you are precisely the sort of person I would want to pay to do it for me. What you already know is more valuable than you think. I hope you don’t find it presumptuous of me to suggest that, I just think it would be a good match for your existing interests, you’ve already got a great platform from which to promote such a service and it would be in the interests of the WordPress community as a whole to see you establish a way to get well paid for the valuable role you play as communicator. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 14, 2010 @ 6:32 PM @Jeffro – I know you have a big hate stick for shared webhosts …. Jeff, I think that it is unfair and, if you don’t mind my being blunt, self-deceptive of you to write off what I am saying as some sort of personal vendetta that I have against shared hosting, just because you have made a financial decision to build your business upon a shared environment. My “big hate stick” is for ANY product that deliberately gives customers a false impression about what they are actually buying and, yeah, shared hosting is a fundamentally scammy, high-profit industry designed to harvest people who either don’t care or don’t understand what they’re getting. … but it’s not like some of the problems you mention do not effect other types of hosting services as well Actually, the key problem I identified was that being at the mercy of other people’s decisions is always a bad idea and, yes, the main advantage of a dedicated server or, to a lesser extent, a VPS is that you have more control over your security, you can do the simple things that need to be done and know that responsibility for it isn’t being outsourced to some clueless, underpaid kid who knows that no-one is ever going to check his work or, if problems do crop up, knows he can blame it on WordPress. I understand the risks involved with shared hosting but in reality, my two years with AnHosting were pretty much trouble free. I had a great experience with them. Now I’m on HostGator and so far, so good. Weren’t you down for quite a few days recently? Actually, didn’t you have a couple of longish outages over the last couple of months? I’m not keeping track, I just remember getting quite a few 404s when trying to visit your site. Keeping a WordPress site up and running shouldn’t be rocket science, I would not describe prolonged outages as being “pretty much trouble free” or “a great experience”. I’m just saying. I don’t think you can accurately have a blanket statement that all shared webhosting providers are bad. Many are bad but not all of them. I did not say that all shared providers are bad, you are completely misrepresenting what I said. Despite the entire concept of shared hosting being shaky, I am sure that some companies do a better job than others or, at least, are luckier than others, in the same way that some time-share apartments are prettier than others. What I said was that being at the mercy of other people’s decisions is always a bad idea, even if you get lucky and disaster doesn’t strike immediately. The point is that you can be rolling along nicely for quite a while but, unless you have done the security checks yourself (and, seriously, that is nowhere near as hard as it sounds), you will never know quite when your hard work and reputation might get flushed. My “big hate stick” for shared hosting has including me saying that it is fine for the 99% of WordPress sites for whom downtime is not a big deal. I even suggested a rule of thumb: if you consider your site to be important and regularly invest time and energy into it, if you are trying to build community around what you do, then, yes, sure, uptime becomes important and needlessly relying upon someone else to keep your server secure is a dumb way to save money but, again, far fewer than 1% of WordPress sites fall into that category. What I’m saying is fairly measured and essentially correct, you shouldn’t be taking it personally. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 14, 2010 @ 11:52 AM Network Solutions’ post cast some vague aspersions at WordPress: “We continue to look out for our customers and our security team is reviewing logs to determine which WordPress instance or plugin may need to be fixed. We have also been working with experts in the WordPress community on this issue.” So, without specifying exactly what the supposed problem with WordPress is, they have squarely pointed the finger at WordPress or some WordPress plugin. To back up their spin, they claim to be “working with experts in the WordPress community”. Yeah. Sure. Here’s the deal: 1. If you use shared hosting, any shared hosting, you are not only at the mercy of other people’s decisions, always a bad idea, you are also ALWAYS going to be fighting a losing battle against the company’s two main imperatives: to stick as many people as possible onto one server and to pay as little as possible for server admins who know how to monitor what happens on that server. 2. Companies like Network Solutions, to whom hosting is merely a ludicrously profitable sideline that they stumbled upon accidentally in the wake of their ludicrous good luck in being handed the monopoly on domains, do not give a merry damn about the well-being of their hosting customers. As large corporations they do, however, know, deep in their DNA, that when a problem crops up, it is ALWAYS a smart idea to shift the blame elsewhere. So, despite the fact that this specific problem only affects their customers, they blame WordPress, which is used, without this specific problem, by pretty much every other host in the world. So, Jeffro, you’re going to ask who might be right in this particular spat, Network Solutions or Matt? Seriously? » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 13, 2010 @ 8:30 PM A Little Closer To Being Global Actually, there were loads of Gravatar mods for vBulletin, coded by volunteers, but they got deleted when the new owners decided that WordPress was a threat to their business model. With vBulletin, you’ve got to remember, all the original devs have left – Scott McVicar, now Facebook’s Open Source Developer Advocate, tweeted “So sad to see the company I helped build up screw customers over. Glad I bailed when I did” – so, the team that made the software great has been disbanded, their amazing plans completely flushed by the company, all that remains are a bunch of clueless but greedy executives who don’t understand software, don’t see the value in being interoperable with other services and only care about milking their remaining customers for every dollar they can. It is a shame that WPTavern is not built around BuddyPress because, with vB, you’ve climbed into bed with some of the seediest guys imaginable. For anyone else trying to decide whether to take the open or the proprietary path for their website, check out The vB Truth website or this article about vBulletin at The Register. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 7, 2010 @ 5:13 PM WPWeekly Episode 94 – Commercial Themes @Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with sketch) – GPL only kicks in if you or your client distribute the code beyond your client. For instance, if your client’s business sold the theme to another business, the GPL would give that other business the right to distribute the code too, if they so wished. The selling point is that, with Open code, your clients are freer too, they know that they are getting code from you that can be viewed and modified by anyone, even if you get hit by a bus. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 6, 2010 @ 5:52 AM That was a great episode, Jacob was very good, I love his inquisitive, hard-driving style, it is a good contrast to your friendly, whimsical style, the two of you make an excellent team. Was interesting to hear the themers discuss their businesses, wonderful that they are all still well-disposed towards one another. I am a customer of both Brian and Cory, they both offer great value and, as they explained in the show, they do a lot of evangelize WordPress. More importantly, in embracing the GPL, they share the community’s wider vision. Matt’s appearance was a nice surprise, I hope that will do something to lessen the misinformed FUD that has been floating around the Tavern; for as long as I can remember, Matt has been crystal clear that he wants to see businesses built upon the WordPress platform to thrive. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 4, 2010 @ 2:46 PM Cuba And The Goal Of WordPress Did Gutenberg have a mission statement? » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 3, 2010 @ 12:53 PM WordPress Dev Chat For 4-01-10 Thanks for the summary, good to hear that the first beta is due tomorrow, I’ve been enjoying playing around with the alpha. » Posted By donnacha | WordSkill On April 1, 2010 @ 6:02 PMComments Posted By donnacha | WordSkill
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