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New Ebook Released For WP Multisite

By Jeffro on April 3, 2012

Sometimes, the most difficult task at hand when operating a website is locating the documentation that helps solve a problem. For those of you who have been looking for a WordPress Multisite reference book to help get you started, Mika Epstein and Andrea Rennick have co-authored a book specifically for WordPress Multisite. The book contains over 40 pages of information ranging from installation to configuration. However, one of the more interesting aspects of the book is that the price tag is PWYW otherwise known as Pay What You Want. Mika suggests $5.00 but it’s not a mandatory amount. Since Sunday, she has seen over 500 downloads of the book while earning $150.00. With that said, the book has been released under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license which basically means you can use it on your website, put it within the Codex, give it away to someone, but what you can’t do is make money from it. I encourage you to read her take on why she released the book as is.

I think one of the things worth taking away from this little experience is that code is GPL, text is not.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged ebook, information, multisite | 6 Responses

WooThemes Releases Survey Results As An Infographic

By Jeffro on December 22, 2011

WooThemes has released the results of their 2012 WordPress Wishlist survey. Instead of dishing out numbers and statistics, they have compiled and released the information in the form of an info graphic. Of particular interest are the results from both questions related to WordPress as a CMS. 90% think that WordPress is a full-fledged CMS. 68% of respondents mostly use WordPress on websites requiring extensive CMS functionality. I believe that’s a very encouraging sign of WordPress maturing as a platform and slowly but surely, getting rid of the label that it’s just for blogging. ∞

Posted in WordPress | Tagged infographic, information, survey, woothemes

Interview With Darren Hoyt On WPTopics.com

By Jeffro on June 15, 2009

Last week, I published a post which discussed the fact that there are so many sites centered around WordPress that perhaps we were reaching a point where there are TOO many sites. Darren Hoyt who we know from creating the Mimbo Pro theme has launched a new site called WPTopics.com which tries to present WordPress information from only established sites. I was lucky enough to talk to Darren for an hour the other day to find out a little more about this particular website.

In a nutshell, can you explain what WPTopics is all about?

My best wording for it is in the footer but I guess it’s supposed to generate discussion, record how much value people place on WP blogs and the personalities behind them. But I really don’t want it to be a popularity contest. For example, I’m teaching a friend web design from the ground up (he’s paying me). So of course I’m trying to get him into WordPress and this tool is exactly the kind of thing he needs instead of sifting through thousands of fly-by-night WP blogs by people who abandon them after 6 months. I want to only to link to people ingrained in the community, who are dedicated to the software and influence it.

Upon visiting WPTopics.com the first thing I think of is AllTop which does have a category for WordPress. How does WPTopics differentiate itself from AllTop?

As far as I can tell, the AllTop page was not compiled by anyone ingrained in the WP community. It’s a fair sampling of info but it’s a little unfocused and there are no categories, voting, nor will it probably ever change, whereas if someone’s blogging drops off or they move away from WP, I’ll be removing them from WPTopics.

You mentioned earlier that you don’t want this to turn onto a popularity contest. But, if people vote for certain sites or feeds, will those rise to the top of the page? How will you protect against those sites telling their communities to vote for them?

I cant’ really think of a reason someone would vote if they legitimately didn’t like a site. Like Nathan and Justin got their readers to vote for them and they did. It’s a great reflection of the enthusiasm people have for certain people’s work like Ian Stewart, etc. But, if someone pisses someone off, they could also go and give them a 1-star, and mess up their whole rating average. No real way to protect against it, it keeps everyone on their toes.

What does it take to be added to WPTopics.com?

Basically if you’re consistently publishing articles that talk back to the WP community at large, and, in fact, change the way Automattic does things, that’s the sign of a trusted developer. I know people like Lloyd & Matt “check in” on certain sites like Ian’s and Justin’s, and sometimes comment so stuff like that is a pretty good measuring stick. Basically when the creme rises to the top it’s obvious and if I have any doubt, I send a group email to Justin, Ian, Nathan and you and ask if you think they’re a good candidate. By no means is it a truly scientific system.

Ok tell us a little bit about what is going on behind the scenes. Are you using specific plugins to pull in the feeds? Are you using a caching plugin? Did you do the design yourself?

Yeah, it’s using a custom WP framework I’ll probably release soon codenamed, Gravy. Each feed is actually a post and I’m using the More Fields plugin to specify .ico files along with the feed and URL address. Then Ben (binarymoon) helped implement some javascript that only queries posts if you’re on a particular tab, plus the voting plugin and supercache. When I say ‘framework’ i should really say ‘baseline theme’.

What sort of things do you have in store for WPTopics.com?

Some kind of twitter integration that isn’t chaotic and hopefully a “featured article” of stuff that’s especially good. Other than that, I want to sit back and watch how/if/when people use it, and then make decisions based on that.

Posted in News | Tagged centralization, darren hoyt, information, wordpress, wptopics | 4 Responses

Is It Time To Refocus The Dashboard For News?

By Jeffro on February 10, 2009

Elliot Back recently published a post describing how most of the items appearing in the WordPress Dashboard had nothing to do with WordPress. Elliot published the following image within his blog post which highlights the posts which have nothing to do with WordPress.

Irrelevant Dashboard Items?

Notice how all of those posts point back to Matt’s personal blog. I’m a fan of Matt’s blog. I think he publishes great links as well as great photos but when it comes to WordPress, those things are irrelevant. I agree with Elliot in that perhaps it is time that Matt takes his personal blog out of the Planet WordPress Feed and thus, out of the dashboard. There simply is no reason for photos of Paris or any other place (except a wordcamp event) to be published in the dashboard which is supposed to be used to keep tabs on all things WordPress along with related projects. Also, I don’t consider Matt’s dashboard posts as spam. I consider them irrelevant to the project.

In WordPress 2.7, we have two ways to get news. A WordPress News widget which is tied strictly to the WordPress Development blog and then Other WordPress News which is a condensed version of what you see in Elliot’s image. But the fact remains that irrelevant posts are showing up in the Other WordPress News widget. While I’m on the topic of the dashboard, I would really like to see the BuddyPress development blog added to the planet feed as I have no idea on what is going on over there unless I visit the site or check my feed reader.

You might be wondering, why not have those sites aggregate a WordPress category on their blog instead of the entire site? Well, after looking at the feed links on the Planet WordPress website, that is indeed what they have done with the exception of a few sites, Matt’s being one of them. I’d love for Matt’s blog to stay in the Planet WordPress feed but only when he publishes something to a WordPress category on his blog. It just makes more sense. If he doesn’t like categories, he could always use the RSS feed from the WordPress Tag.

Just to get a feeling on how other people feel about getting news from the WordPress dashboard, I asked those in the forum as well as those who follow the WPTavern account on Twitter if they used or considered the dashboard useful when keeping up to date with the happenings regarding the project. Here is what I have so far. (Keep in mind that the majority of users on the WPTavern Forum are advanced users of WordPress so this is probably not a good way to judge their effectiveness. I think the WordPress.org forum would be a better measure.)

From The Forum:

Len – I’ve pretty well stripped everything from my dashboard including feeds. I use a couple of feed readers (Feed Demon and RSS Bandit) to follow feeds.

Andrew – I just remove them.

hallsofmontezuma – Personally, I love the feeds in the WordPress dashboard. I don’t subscribe to many blog feeds, but I want to keep up with the “WordPress News,” WP core developer blogs and official WordPress blog, weblogtoolscollection, and Lorelle. I have a couple others in my Google Reader, but I’m in and out of various wp-admins all day so it’s a convenient place.

Kit – I kept one of the WP feeds but changed one to show a client’s feed since it helps me to get a head’s up on anything that may be coming my way as far as customer service.

andrea_r – I mostly leave them and ignore them. I’ve bookmarked the New Post page for both of my blogs so I go directly there. That being said, I do occasionally scan the headlines, and a couple of the blogs in there I’ve subscribed to any, like WTC. On WPMU systems, I try and replace that feed with the sitewide feed of the system, and another area with the main blog feed.

BlaKKJaKK – I view them daily and more often than not check them out. The only ones I never click on are Matt’s because he never posts actualy articel just links, so I view them as spam.

Stefanvervoort – I usually don’t pay attention, I have my feed readers for feeds.

From Twitter:

Frumph @wptavern irrelevant.

jeremyclarke @wptavern the main feed WordPress Planet is pretty vital, though I read it in RSS.

sparun @wptavern I just need a “Delete all spam” button on the dashboard.

katemag @wptavern the WP dashboard is helpful.

Conclusion:

It’s quirks like these in the WordPress project that make me laugh. We can generate a whole discussion around what seems like a problem and the solution is so simple, it’s just a matter of waiting to see if Matt agrees. If you really feel like this is a problem, send Matt an email as he is the man in charge of the sites aggregated on the Planet.WordPress.org domain.

Now I leave it up to you for discussion. How do you use the WordPress Dashboard for keeping up to date with what is happening with the WordPress project? Are those writing about this making a big stink over nothing, or do we have a valid argument?

Posted in WordPress | Tagged dashboard, information, matt, wordpress | 5 Responses