WordPress community site VoodooPress has recently turned one year old. To celebrate, they are giving away VoodooPress branded T-Shirts. They come at the cost of providing the site some social love by clicking on any of the social media icons on the site. Small price to pay for a chance at a T-Shirt. Congrats to the VoodooPress team and I hope the second year is better than the first!
Just imagine how powerful one would be if they wielded a GPL voodoo doll.
This is just a friendly reminder that the WPTavern watering hole also known as the forum, is still open for business. I have kept the forums maintained over the past few weeks and last night, I updated everything to the current version as well as cleaned up a couple of different spots. While the forum is not as active as it was two years ago, there are still new members registering to the forum and every now and then, a good discussion will pop up. If you are looking for a place to hang out and talk WordPress without the fear of being shunned into oblivion, this is the place to do it. I highly encourage you to browse through the archive of the forum as a number of interesting conversations have taken place over the past two years. The archive is a little bit like a WordPress museum.
Registration is free as are the drinks. If you take this opportunity to register, be sure to answer the anti spam question during registration which asks, “Why would you like to join this forum?“. I’m looking for a short response that doesn’t look like spam. Once you register, consider leaving a message in the Tavern chat box located near the top of the forum. Or, introduce yourself to the community via the Forum Lobby.
If you’re already a member of the forum, stop by and check-in. Let us know what you’ve been up to.
It started off with a link and turned into something disgusting. KevinJohn Gallagher explained the various reasons for why his company decided not to pursue using WordPress anymore for their clients and I linked to that article because I thought it raised some points that were good for discussion. After I linked to the article on WPTavern as well as Twitter, his article made the front page of HackerNews. ReadWrite/Web also linked to the article with their own thoughts. One of the reactions to his article that I witnessed was that a lot of people agreed with Kevin and the points he made. However, a number of people disagreed with him and in fact, disagreed so passionately that KevinJohn stated within the comments of my article that he had received death threats as well as had DDoS attacks performed to his website.
Sadly in the last 7 days I’ve had 3 ddos attacks, 14 threats (4 “credible”) against myself or my family, multiple requests to have me removed from speaking at WordPress events to which I’m already signed up and personally sponsor, and 31 people roll-back their purchase for Open Source Scotland because I’m involved. All because my staff, not me, but the good folks I work with every day, don’t want want to use WordPress anymore. I’m being punished by this community, for doing the right thing: listening to my colleagues and my clients.
On the one hand, this is ridiculous behaviour. There is no reason what so ever to give someone death threats because their company has decided not to use WordPress anymore. Mark Jaquith was strongly opposed to the harassment Kevin was receiving and even Jane Wells offered to help out KevinJohn.
On the other hand, crazy people exist within the realm of reality and they can not be controlled. Most of the conversation that occurred as the result of Kevin’s article were from sane individuals that make up the WordPress community. It’s unfortunate what Keven had to go through because of that post but I strongly disagree that it’s a reflection of how the actual WordPress community is like. There are pricks and jerks within the WordPress community, no doubt about that. But, in my experience the nicer people far outweigh the jerks.
I’m a big fan of WordPress but I’m not going to cry myself to sleep if someone tells me they are ditching the software for something else. It’s common sense to use the best tool for the job instead of forcing a square peg into a round hole. It’s important to listen to the reasons why people switch from WordPress or desert the software but it’s not something anyone should lose sleep over. It’s definitely not worth threatening someone’s life. It’s an opportunity to learn and figure out how the software can be improved. This is the type of attitude we should have towards folks like KevinJohn Gallagher or others that publish their discontent for WordPress. We shouldn’t be slapping people around with an elitist, cult like hand that twitches every time someone criticizes the software. We are better than that. Let’s prove it.
Looks like Drearmeda who is one of the guys behind Sucuri.net has placed some WordPress ink on his arm. He’s certainly not the first to get a WordPress logo as a tattoo and probably won’t be the last. While it’s cool to see this kind of enthusiasm for the software, some people might look at this as going over the top. I don’t think something like this symbolizes the community as turning into a cult around WordPress. It’s just a persons unique way of showing their enthusiasm for the software, which doesn’t bother me a bit. Does it bother or worry you to see a software logo tattooed on someone’s body?
WordPress community member Ipstenu has started a master list within the WordPress.org support forum highlighting some of the most frequently asked questions as well as listing numerous issues that folks have reported along with solutions. If you are having trouble with WordPress 3.3, please read through the posts within this forum thread before creating a new thread. There is a good chance that your support query has already been answered with a working solution. ∞
Ryan Imel of WPCandy.com has announced the launch of a quarterly magazine focused entirely on WordPress called the WordPress Quarterly. The magazine will be physical in nature meaning you can hold it in your hands as well as have a digital counterpart that won’t be available until the print edition ships. During the course of the year, the magazine will have four issues shipped, one in January, April, July, and October. If you want to own a small piece of WordPress history, you can pre-order the first issue for $12.00 while subscribing for the entire year will be $36.00. That doesn’t include shipping which many people outside of the U.S. have already complained about. However, Ryan has since tweaked the shipping prices to make them more affordable. The first issue already has a slew of contributing WordPress all stars which you can see here, covering the gamut from an article on TimThumb to bbPress and the GooglePlex.
What perplexes me is the idea of going through with a physical WordPress centric magazine at all. Back in March of 2010, Justin Tadlock started an interesting discussion on the Tavern forum regarding the idea of creating some sort of community oriented WordPress magazine. It would have been a website dedicated to the topics of WordPress, bbPress, BuddyPress and anything else that needed to be focused upon. Although the site wouldn’t really be used as a typical blog but more or less be used to publish non time sensitive content such as reviews, interviews, tips and tricks. At the end of the day, the idea never gained traction to see the light of day but it looks as though the excitement that was expressed regarding the idea back in 2010 is still prevalent as I’ve seen a number of people subscribe to the WP Quarterly Magazine.
Fast forward to the end of 2011 and the question I have is, what has changed since then to turn the idea into a reality with not so much of a website but a physical magazine? While Justin wanted a group of contributors to simply give back when submitting an article to the magazine, WPCandy is charging for this content. I wonder if the authors will be allowed in on profit sharing or if they are paid on a per article basis? Considering the alternative of being able to publish those great articles on ones own site, I’d be hard pressed to think people will just give away that type of content without a price attached.
At any rate, I’ll be watching from a distance to see if this magazine can gain traction and stick around for awhile or if the initial surge of subscriptions and excitement will die down. At the very least, owning the first issue will be like owning a small piece of history.
When do you think that WordPress is going to completely rewrite their code base so it’s an actual CMS instead of a hacked together glorified blogging system?
I find I get that question quite a lot and it annoys me. WordPress is being rewritten all the time. Check out the development that happens on Trac. Most of the people who ask questions like that haven’t had a decent look at the codebase for ages. WordPress IS way more than a glorified blogging system already and if there are specific issues you have with the way it’s coded, patches are welcome!
My favorite question and answer via – Questions and Answers
Here is the recorded video featuring the presentation of Matt Mullenweg of WordPress with Dries Buytaert of Drupal discussing open source. Kudos goes out to the Schipulcon group for getting these two together for an awesome presentation. The audio is terrible until you hit the 4 minute mark. If you want to see a transcript for some of the questions you can read them on the Schipul Blog. Definitely watch from 32 minutes onward as that is when the audience starts asking some pretty good questions.
WordPress has a smaller community than either Drupal or Joomla, so you may not find be able to find the help you need. – Not sure who could agree with that statement, especially after reading this report which is about a year old but most likely, still relevant. Regardless of the report, I’d love to hear anyone back up the claim that WordPress has the smallest community amongst the two. ∞
WordPress Developer, freelancer and friend of mine Ptah Dunbar, was recently in a head on collision accident that nearly took his life. Everything you need to know regarding what happened can be read on the following Google Plus page but to make a long story short, Ptah found himself going headfirst off of his motorcycle through the windshield of a taxi without wearing a helmet. He was actually pronounced dead on the scene but was able to be brought back.
Thanks to the awesome people that make up the WordPress community, a website was started to help pay for some of his hospital bills as well as living expenses called GetWellPtah.com. Shortly after going live, the goal of $6,000.00 was reached and in fact, was exceeded by about $500.00.
A big thanks to all that donated to help Ptah get better. I’ve known the guy since attending my first ever Wordcamp event back in 2007, WordCamp Dallas. He has an awesome sense of humor while also being a talented coder. Ptah, I sincerely hope you get better and if there is any money left over, please buy a super cool helmet so this doesn’t happen again!