Displaying 31 To 50 Of 50 Comments @Kevinjohn Gallagher – very well put and thanks for pointing out Open Source Scotland, what a cool wee website, especially the last menu item. Thank you for organizing it, unless something unavoidable crops up, I will be there, would love to hear Andrew and Rasmus talk, and I’ve already seen Joost blow the audience away at WordCamp Ireland, my claim to fame is that I was the guy running around with the microphone so that people could ask questions :) » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 23, 2011 @ 3:06 PM @Matthew McGarity – You’re right, there is no point in us becoming frustrated with the rules regarding WordCamp when we are entirely free to organize our own events, according to local needs, under different names. You can understand though, I’m sure, why people express such frustration, it seems bizarre that the priority of a WordPress Foundation is not to promote WordPress usage and grassroots participation in any way possible but, rather, to embed yet another centralized bastion of rules and bureaucracy in a world that is already drowning in red tape. It is what it is and, clearly, not open for discussion, so, we just have to shrug our shoulders and route around the problem. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 23, 2011 @ 3:03 PM @Ipstenu – Well, to be fair, they did ask at the Manchester WordCamp and, for whatever reason, they ended up thinking it was necessary to rebrand their single annual event to include the city name, even though that was supposedly not necessary. Taryn, the organizer of the WPScotland group, has mentioned above that they would like to hold a WordCamp in 2012 “if our bid is successful” – are applicants going to feel that, regardless of the stated guidelines, bids that play it safe and opt for city name branding, even when country name would supposedly be permissible, are more likely to be accepted? I agree that diversity is good and I would just like to see more user-driven WordPress events, whether they be officially sanctioned or not – it is astonishing that it has taken until late 2011 for there to be one in Scotland, a technologically advanced country with a population of over five million educated people and only some of them drunk out of their minds. Without a doubt, the existence of independent WordPress events will be good for WordPress and healthy for the WordCamp movement too. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 19, 2011 @ 1:09 PM @Julian Suvarez – I am aware that there are pockets of animosity Automattic but I really don’t want the point I am making to be swept into that maelstrom. In particular, I don’t want people who care about WordPress and who bring up legitimate points to be lumped in with the usual suspects whose continual complaints are driven by spite and naked self-interest. Perhaps I am naive, I have never met him in person, but, on the whole, I am impressed with Matt’s leadership, I think we are lucky to have him. In fact, I am fucking amazed that, even after all these years, he appears not to have been softened by proximity to the world of big money and venture capital, he stills appears to genuinely believe in Open Source principles and has spoken more clearly and eloquently on that than anyone else. I trust the man. Jane, too, is clearly dedicated albeit a tad prickly and that is why I did not mention her until she herself entered this discussion. I take your point that she is often merely the messenger and unfairly blamed for the decisions of others but I think my point is that, for whatever reason, it is the message that is being misinterpreted – we can all agree that there is confusion. Of course, the momentum behind WordPress is so unstoppable that Automattic don’t need to worry about the sensitivities of early adopters, there are more than enough newly-minted evangelists to replace the old-timers who have gradually become disgruntled, but it strikes me that misunderstandings like this could so easily be addressed before they fester into distrust. Is it possible that the reason why people are so worried about saying the wrong thing is that they sense that the Automattic folks often feel embattled and will interpret any questioning of their actions as an attack? Are our only choices really between being a fanboy or being an enemy? » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 19, 2011 @ 1:06 PM It is also worth noting, from WordCamp UK organizer Tony Scott’s comments above, that Jane’s comment in Manchester, and the resulting controversy, led to an important change in how the single annual WordCamp in the UK is named, which is a real world impact far beyond the limited circumstances she suggested of … … once more than one person/group wanted to hold an event in that country, then it would need to broken down into city names so people would know which events were which. There is, at the very least, confusion regarding this policy and it is alarming that people feel that they must read between the lines so carefully when Jane says something. Frankly, there is a slightly oppressive atmosphere in the WordPress community these days that disappoints me. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 18, 2011 @ 3:33 PM @Jane Wells – Thanks for taking the time to respond and letting us know what the official line is. My comments above were responding to a post which discusses this new WordUp event brand. It was entirely relevant, appropriate and valid of me to speculate on why the organizers of upcoming WordPress events in the UK, such as Edinburgh and Brighton, are choosing to forgo the support of the WordPress Foundation and the cachet of the WordCamp brand. As @Tony Scott reminds us, the issue of naming was raised by you at the WordCamp he ran in July last year and you must surely remember the reaction of many members of the British WordPress community. I drew upon my memory of that controversy to inform my speculation. If that entire controversy was, in fact, based upon a misinterpretation of what you said, a lot of people in the UK certainly aren’t aware of any clarification – in going over the many posts written at the time, I did not notice anyone from Automattic popping up to reveal that it was all a misunderstanding. Your explanation of the naming rule makes sense and sounds fair but, for whatever reason, it does not appear to have filtered through to many people directly involved in organizing events. As I noted, the idea of running a WordCamp Scotland (which, like many such plans, may never have come to fruition anyway) was dropped specifically because of the impression that this rule would be forced upon us. That’s not true at all. Most of the events in planning for 2012 are still in the “Planned WordCamps” column on the schedule page because they haven’t nailed down dates/venue yet. If you had looked there before commenting, you’d see that Azerbaijan, Norway, and Croatia are all using their country name. Please don’t suggest that I should be aware of every branch and twig of WordCamp documentation before I am entitled to comment. I believe I was fairly thorough in examining the page that Scribu linked to, on which all 2012 WordCamps – at all stages of planning – use city name rather than country, including Baku, Oslo and Zagreb. You say there is some schedule page I should have been aware of but that is on an entirely different site from the WordPress.org one that Scribu linked to and which looks pretty authoritative to me. I am just making comments, not writing the editorial for the Wall Street Journal, my point was that Scribu’s link did not refute and, in fact, supported my speculation. If, instead, he had linked to the schedule page, sure, my conclusion would have been different, just as I now accept the definitive truth from the horse’s mouth. For what it’s worth, it is not a bad thing that this discussion has taken place; a lot grumbling has stemmed from apparent misunderstandings of the WordPress Foundation’s role and attitude, a lot of good people have been rubbed up the wrong way and, even if they are mistaken, it should be treated as real issue. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 18, 2011 @ 2:43 PM Erm… then why are so many “WordCamp [Country]” events this year still? @scribu – by “so many”, do you mean the 3 out of the 37 WordCamps on that page? I presume that Germany, Denmark, Kenya, all of which are 2011 events, were already being organized by the time this rule was announced and would have had a good argument that it would mess up their existing sponsorship plans. I imagine the horrified organizers scrambled to come up with any excuse they could to avoid having their event so ruinously downgraded. I would particularly like to hear what the reaction of the Germans was :) Of the 2012 events, precisely none have been allowed to use their country name. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 18, 2011 @ 10:39 AM @that girl again – yeah, I noticed that, even given the independence to choose “Scotland” if they wanted, the WordUp folks opted for “Edinburgh” instead. As I said, I wasn’t involved in any of the planning for the event but I can think of a few reasons for that, the most likely of which is that the organizers are mostly WordPress professionals and, despite the event being independent, they are nonetheless anxious not to antagonize the Automattic folks – no-one wants to get black-listed and it is already notoriously hard for UK firms to get listed as WordPress consultants in Automattic’s CodePoet directory (for instance, according to CodePoet, the grand total of Scottish WordPress consultants is NONE … and, among the many Scottish WordPress consultants I know, none of us has ever been told why we were rejected). In regard to WordCamp Ireland’s site, I wonder whether that might have been a trademark issue? I would imagine that Matt has been advised to go after domains using ‘wordcamp’ in the same way as he was advised to shut down domains including ‘wordpress’. Much more likely that, once the new rule was revealed, the Irish organizers lost heart and simply stopped maintaining the site – it was a particularly cruel blow for them because they put an awful lot of work establishing the first WordCamp Ireland that year. Their preferred venue was in a seriously remote town called Kilkenny but, with the WordCamp Ireland branding, it was still a success and seemed destined to become an annual event. Would it work as WordCamp Kilkenny? Well, I think the abandoned website says all we need to know about that. Unlike the WordPress trademark, I don’t imagine anyone will ever need to be sued for infringing the WordCamp trademark – the sort of people who organize WordPress events, even if they do resent the WordPress Foundation’s myopic decisions, tend to be nice, idealistic, conscientious people. In fact, in any other reality, Automattic would be eager to encourage them, not place ridiculous obstructions in their paths. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 17, 2011 @ 10:38 PM Hi Miroslav. I can understand your dislike of the “WordCamp + Country” form in the context of the US and your country, Canada, but I will explain why I believe that the WordPress Foundation should apply a different rule to the vast majority of other countries in the world. First, however, I’ll address some of the other points you brought up. Yes, there are plenty of WordPress users all over the UK and almost none of them want to see WordCamps happen only in expensive London, not even the Londoners, but that is likely to be the unintended consequence of this misguided WordPress Foundation rule. Any large capital in a relatively compact country has certain draining effects. If you force all WordCamps to be “local”, you give yet another huge advantage to a city as massive, congested and concentrated as London. You are, naturally enough, looking at it from the perspecitive of attendees – the people who pay to attend the event – and, of course, the most WordPress users are in the most populous cities. I would, however, suggest that, for important practical reasons, it makes more sense to think about it in terms of the availability of sponsors who identify themselves with specific regions. You need the financial support of sponsors early on in order to pay for the venue rental and other fixed costs that must be paid in advance, often long before you can even start selling “early bird” tickets to attendees. I would argue that you could put on a WordPress event in any city and, if the ticket price is fair, you will sell out long before the event – getting attendees to come is rarely a problem, getting the event off the ground in the first place is. Without sponsors, the event either doesn’t happen or, if it does, the ticket prices will be astronomical. Unfortunately, in pure advertising terms, it is hard to make the argument that sponsoring a WordCamp gives a company a good return on their advertising dollar, so, they have to be persuaded that there is another, less tangible but still important benefit: that they are supporting a community that they, both as a business and as individuals, are part of. From that perspective, the number of companies who might feel any sort of obligation to sponsor a WordCamp UK is far greater than the number who will feel the same way about WordCamp Leeds. There is also the important factor the sponsoring any event gives a company certain bragging rights, gives it something to proudly mention on its website and, let’s face it, being of sponsor of WordCamp UK sounds far better than being a sponsor of WordCamp Leeds. I suspect that even companies based in Leeds would feel that way. The overall result of making all WordCamps local is that London will have a wildly disproportionate advantage in securing sponsorship because it is the city with the most businesses locally. Another very real problem is that high-quality international speakers are reluctant to appear at events that sound too regional. Again, being a featured speaker at WordCamp UK gives them far more bragging rights than WordCamp Leeds. There are some speakers who, in the absence of an actual WordCamp UK, could probably be persuaded to appear at a WordCamp London because it is the capital and, therefore, becomes the de facto main event, regardless of the WordPress Foundation’s intentions. Technically speaking WordCamp UK can be in any city in the United Kingdom. No, that is precisely the problem: the event previously known as WordCamp UK can no longer happen, no event can be named WordCamp UK. Under the rule introduced in 2010, each WordCamp must go by the name of the city in which it is held. Previously, this allowed the event, with all of its cachet as a national event, to rotate around different cities in the UK, with the honor going to whichever city offered the best combination of accessibility, facilities and price – this was never, ever going to be London and even Londoners appreciated being able to get out and see different parts of the UK. Companies all over the UK, even in London, could be approached to sponsor a WordCamp UK far away and high-quality speakers were happy to fly into cities they had never heard of because the event itself was prestigious. The WordPress Foundation rule probably made perfect sense when they were sitting in some San Francisco cafe, at the edge of a massive country with strong regional identities and vibrant local tech industries – WordCamp Austin, WordCamp Phoenix, WordCamp Portland … none of them need the cachet of being a national event and the capital city, Washington D.C., does not overshadow the rest of the country Another massive country with a non-dominant capital is … Canada! Toronto’s tech scene is entirely distinct from Vancouver’s and your capital, Ottawa, is hardly a threat to either. I would imagine the same applies to the major Australian cities too – do many people even realize that Canberra is the capital? No, the problem I am addressing arises only in older, geographically smaller countries where the capital has long overshadowed the rest of the country: the UK, Holland, France, Italy, Ireland etc. If their intention was truly to encourage grassroots, regional growth of WordPress, the WordPress Foundation scored an own-goal with this rule. It happened because they were not thinking about unintended consequences and, even after the stringent complaints of the foreign organizers who were affected by their meddling, they did not care enough to take on board the scale of the problem or to notice the effect that it has now, as predicted, had. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 17, 2011 @ 4:27 PM Jeff, thank you so much for the shout out, you are always so kind, and thanks also for covering WordUp Edinburgh. Personally, I am very excited to see the start of such events in Scotland – so many people here use and love WordPress, there is even some fascinating innovation going on but it mostly seems to happen in isolated pockets, there has not been what you could really call a “WordPress community” here. On the issue of forking away from the WordCamp concept, I was not involved in organizing this event and, therefore, do not know their exact reasons, but it is worth noting that the rules that come with being allowed to use the WordCamp trademark can be discouraging for organizers outside the U.S. You probably remember the disappointment and anger last July when the WordPress Foundation decided that WordCamps could no longer be branded in the form “WordCamp (country name)” but, instead, must be “WordCamp (city name)”. This makes good sense in the context of a massive country such as the United States – WordCamp USA would be ridiculous – but it put a bullet in the head of WordCamp momentum in countries with different geographic, cultural, economic and infrastructural considerations. Organizers here in the UK already had a tough job but getting sponsorship and speakers for an event called, say, WordCamp Leeds is about ten times harder than if it is called WordCamp UK or WordCamp Wales or, indeed, WordCamp Scotland – I know for a fact that early stage plans for a WordCamp Scotland were abandoned last year specifically because of this decision. The net result has been that, while there has been one official WordCamp in Portsmouth this year, growth has now been diverted to independent events such as WP-Brighton or WordUp Edinburgh and many would-be organizers, all over the UK, have been effectively prodded back into that most natural of British states, apathy. My prediction is that, as a direct consequence of this mandate, we will eventually end up with a relatively expensive WordCamp London, heavily geared towards corporate attendees, which will become the annual WordCamp UK in all but name while regional efforts will struggle and sputter. It is not just the UK; there was no WordCamp Ireland this year either, despite a successful start in 2010 before this new rule was handed down, now they haven’t even bothered to keep the website running. You can bet that this autocratic approach has had a similar dampening effect in most other countries who share the misfortune of not being the U.S.A. – interest in WordPress is booming worldwide, so, obviously, the WordCamp movement will continue to grow but bad centralized decisions made with no consultation, even when supposedly made in the name of grassroots growth, are damaging the overall potential and frightening organizers into going it alone. So, you have to interpret this “fork” with the understanding that, while it would be wonderful to have the support of the larger WordPress community, if such support comes at the cost of having to obey harmful rules mandated by people who have no understanding of the harsh economic realities outside the cosy US bubble of venture capital and eager sponsors, you are better off alone: support that comes with strings is for puppets. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On September 17, 2011 @ 2:15 PM @marc – people have been saying this for years, each time a new fad in programming rolls into town, but it’s only fair to ask: why have none of these wonders of “proper” coding yet managed to magic up any sort of production-ready alternative to WordPress? One that actual, real users choose for actual, real uses? Don’t pay too much attention to armchair critics who don’t understand the difference between talking and doing. If someone, someday, somewhere produces a better publishing platform using Rails or whatever, great, we can all jump over to that but, for now, WordPress is where the action is – use it, enjoy it, improve it. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On May 6, 2011 @ 5:39 PM @Dave Doolin – yeah, exciting times for sure! » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On May 6, 2011 @ 5:27 PM There seems to be a certain amount of rockstar self-delusion going on there – instead of focusing on the “newcomers” that he believes are copying his “brand/model/product strategy”, Adii could have retained his early lead by innovating beyond just making great-looking themes … gloss != innovation. Instead, he let those newcomers pioneer frameworks and non-subscription based revenue models, a pretty bad strategic mistake that will become more obvious as WordPress continues to establish itself as a platform. As far as innovation is concerned, there is a lot going on but we haven’t yet scratched the surface of WordPress’ potential. Adii was right to highlight Gravity Forms, my perception is that they are the company which is doing the most to lay down foundations for an explosion of innovative functionality via add-ons. Only a few days ago, I posted a feature request to the Gravity Forms forums, suggesting a stripped down (and, therefore, highly flexible) add-on that would add bookings, appointments, reservations and rentals functionality, for which the lack of WordPress options has always puzzled me, as it would obviously be a massive market. Carl responded that they are moving in that general direction and, for anyone who creates with WordPress, knowing that a company like Rocket Genius is focused upon expanding what WordPress can do, concentrating on inventing the future of WordPress rather than wasting time self-aggrandizing and disparaging their competitors, that is truly exciting. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On May 3, 2011 @ 8:33 PM Pet Peeve – Akismet Configuration Link Location Some sort of standardization would be welcome For instance, EVERY entry in the plugins list should include a Settings link that takes you directly to that plugins configuration page, it is a major UI fail that we have to go searching for this stuff. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On March 22, 2011 @ 7:36 PM Affiliate Program For Digging Into WordPress Closes You tokenize each sale, just as e-junkie does, and only email the unique download link to the customer once the affiliate has completed payment, to you, of the wholesale price. The automated chain would be: 1. Customer pays $27 to the affiliate, including his email address. 2. Upon receipt of the $27, the affiliate automatically pays $17.82 to you, including the buyer’s email address (the system should ensure that the seller cannot simply not perform this step – there can be no problem of insufficient funds because, of course, the sellers PayPal account has just received in excess of the amount he must now forward to you. HOWEVER, in theory, if the seller somehow circumvents the automated system, well, HE has defrauded the customer, it is not legally your problem any more that Guchi is responsible for the guys selling fake Gucci handbags in the backstreets of Palermo). 3. Upon receipt of the $17.82, the system emails the unique download link to the customer. Any later dispute is then the responsibility of the affiliate, removing the incentive for him to make false purchases. I know that PayPal has been doing interesting things with their API but I have no idea how much of what I’m proposing might already be baked into their system. Either way, it would clearly remove a major pain point that has seriously disrupted (ended?) your business and, I’m guessing, affected everyone who sells digital products via affiliates (lots of people). It’s clearly an opportunity. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On March 5, 2011 @ 11:34 PM @Chris Coyier – I hadn’t thought about the price control angle but, I wonder, might that actually give a “free market” boost to sales, with some sites cutting into their own margin in order to move more volume? Or, would the variance in pricing blow the lid of the whole affiliate game, making regular people realize that all those “recommendations” have a dollar motive behind them? We had legally enforced pricing on books here in the UK, supposedly to protect small bookshops, but all it really did was keep books ridiculously expensive, forcing poorer families to rely upon libraries and second-hand bookshops. Minimum pricing was finally dropped in the early Nineties, allowing the Supermarkets to enter the business and massively reducing the price of books overall. If we hadn’t dropped enforced minimum pricing, Amazon.co.uk, with its heavy discounting, would never have been able to operate effectively in the UK. The immediate problem for you, however, is that affiliate sales of digital products seem to be unworkable in it’s current form. The reselling approach I’m suggesting could be a fix and, I suppose, there is no reason why minimum pricing couldn’t also be enforced as part of the terms. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On March 5, 2011 @ 9:36 PM @Chris Coyier – Hmmm, I wonder – do you think some sort of “reverse affiliate” system might actually work better? Something along these lines: the website owner lists your digital product for sale and, if one of their users goes ahead and makes a purchase, the website owner / affiliate automatically pays you the wholesale price (say, maybe, 66% of the retail price, which would be $17.82 in your case) from their own PayPal account, but they get $27 from the buyer. If the purchase is legit, they’ve just made a profit of $9.18; if it turns out to be fraudulent they gain nothing although you could refund them the wholesale $17.82 (minus transaction fees) if you feel that they were not part of the fraud i.e. if the majority of their sales have been legit. At no point in that chain would there be any incentive for the affiliate to engage in fraud because you’re not actually paying them a commission, they would simply be reselling at a profit, like most other businesses in the world. If a stolen credit card is used to buy a pair of Levis in Macy’s, Levis doesn’t take the hit. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On March 5, 2011 @ 9:17 PM @Jeffro – Seriously, you took that as a criticism of Jeff and Chris? Or of the book? I was joking that this experience – of having to deal with fraudsters – will make them such experts that they could right their next book about dealing with credit card fraud. Admittedly, a pretty weak joke but I presumed it would be obvious, nonetheless, that it was a joke. Apologies to anyone who was offended. Perhaps there is a cultural difference in our senses of humor. I’ll try to be more American. (um … that was also a joke). » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On March 5, 2011 @ 3:58 PM On the other hand, their next book, Digging Into Credit Card Fraud, is going to be awesome. » Posted By donnacha of WordSkill On March 5, 2011 @ 8:26 AM Not One But Two WordPress Tats I’m just relieved for Hugo that there wasn’t a misspelling – he could have got stuck with “Code is Pottery”. » Posted By Donnacha of WordSkill On March 1, 2011 @ 8:57 PMComments Posted By donnacha of WordSkill
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