Joining me this week on WordPress Weekly was Douglas Bell who operates Webmacster87.info as well as hosts the PHPBBWeekly podcast. In this episode, David and I chatted about a number of subjects including:
WordPress User Interface History
BBPress
PHPBB3
The possibilities of the WordPress team working with PHPBB to develope a bridge between the two
Security of PHPBB3 and WordPress
And a whole lot more. While PHPBB and WordPress are two different pieces of open source software serving different needs, I find it interesting to discuss the differences in strategy as well as the similarities between the two.
Plugin Of The Week:Maintenance Mode – Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. When the maintenance mode is activated, a custom defined message is shown to site visitors
Announcements: On January 16th, Jonathan Davis who has created a comprehensive e-commerce plugin for WordPress called Shopp will be our special guest.
I flew solo for episode 35 while Keith cranked out some college work. In this episode, I interviewed Mark E. who is just about ready to release the first beta of his comprehensive WordPress Security plugin called Maximum Security. During our discussion, it was easy to see that this plugin contains just about everything except the kitchen sink as it relates to security and WordPress. If you don’t believe me, view the long list of features this plugin has with more on the way. We also discussed security through obscurity, basic WordPress security practices and much more. Mark has 15 years of experience in network and system security and within this episode, he gave us about 4 years worth of experience in less than an hour!
Plugin Of The Week:Comment Luv – Comments are a wonderful thing to receive on your blog and while adding the dofollow plugin is one way to reward your commenter’s, why not place a link to their last post under their comment. With CommentLuv, you can do that automatically! This is an excellent way to promote comments from your readers. The CommentLuv WordPress Plugin will visit the feed of the comment author and attempt to scrape the last post they made and display it under their comment, this way you can encourage people to join in the discussion of your posts and give something back straight away. WordPress.
Announcements:Douglas Bell will be our special guest on January 9th..
First off, BuddyPress is looking real good these days. Secondly, I’d like to thank Andy Peatling, head honcho for the BuddyPress project for stopping by and lending us an hour of his time to explain exactly what BuddyPress is and does. On December 15th, 2008 Andy released the first beta version of the project. So what exactly is BuddyPress?
BuddyPress is essentially a set of WordPress MU specific plugins. Each plugin component adds a distinct feature to BuddyPress and only handles functionality for that specific component (for example, private messaging). BuddyPress also has a core plugin that all other plugins require, it contains shared functions and performs the basic modifications to the WordPress MU interface.
Tune into the show to hear Andy delve into the feature set of the project as well as taking questions from the audience. By the way, if you don’t have the ability to install WordPress MU and then BuddyPress, you can view and participate in a live demo by registering an account on http://www.testbp.org
Announcements: This was our last show for 2008. Keith and I look forward to creating more great podcasts in 2009 and we both thank each and everyone of you who continue to support the show. Have a happy holiday and a merry new year.
Mark E. Will Be On The Show For January 2nd To Discuss His Comprehensive Security Plugin
On Thursday, December 18th, I had the honor of having a fireside chat so to speak with Matt Mullenweg. The chat lasted a little over two hours and then, Matt stayed around after the show for an additional two hours to field questions from anybody that asked them. There are a number of things that I have taken away with this chat with Matt and I’ll be listing those in an article in the following days but without a shadow of a doubt, Matt is a stand up guy. He answered all of my questions, even the tough ones which were submitted by the community. While there is room left to debate the GPL and what is or isn’t compliant, Matt answered the GPL questions to the best of his ability and in most cases, his answers are nothing more than his personal opinion since certain aspects of the GPL would be much clearer if there was a court case to stand by.
I really feel as though this two hour recording is the most important recording I’ve made yet and is the biggest contribution I have made so far, back to the community. If there was one podcast that you should listen to as it relates to WordPress, the GPL, Matt’s involvement with Automattic and the Project, this would be it. Special thanks to Matt Mullenweg for agreeing to come on the show to address all of the issues that were presented to him by me.
To get a sample of the information discussed in this episode, here are the list of questions that I asked Matt. After this list, he took questions from anyone that asked them either by those who called in or sent them in the chat.
Why were those themes removed from the repository and if you look back at the situation now, do you think you made a mistake by not making a public post about the removals?
Can you explain why the new guideline was added to the theme repository?
Why is it that so many people within the inner circle of the WordPress community believe you and Automattic don’t want anyone else profiting through or around WordPress?
In your opinion, do you think that premium themes have actually benefited the community by way of furthering the overall development of WordPress themes?
In a recent conversation, I saw you describe premium themes as propietary and how you felt that was a better word than premium. Why is that?
How many of these debates and the way things are done are a result of their not being a court case to go by?
Does it bother you at all to see countless debates on various WordPress theme author sites about the GPL and what is and not compliant with it?
Drupal and Joomla have decided the commercial stuff is okay but why not WordPress?
In November of 2007 hot off the heels of WordCamp Argentina, news came out about a possible theme marketplace where people sold themes through the marketplace and the theme author as well as Automattic each recieved a cut of the profits. Was that your way of trying to help premium theme authors and has their been any progress on the idea?
The Drupal community has debated this GPL/Premium/Theme issue for a while. And a solid understanding has come from it:
A theme is made up of several files – template files (ending in .php), CSS, images and JavaScript. The template files are considered a part of Drupal, which is licensed under the GPL, which means they are not restricted in their redistribution. You are free to share the .php files so others can benefit from them. However, the rest of the theme – images, CSS and JavaScript – is independent from Drupal and owned by us and licensed by you for one website per purchase. You may not publish or share these parts of the themes with anyone else. Please review our EULA for full details. (Taken from a Drupal Theme Developers page)
When the notion of making money by selling themes pops up at WordCamps, you are quick to explain the WordPress.com business model of selling services and building support/value around the prodcut but this model will not work for everyone. What is a premium theme author to do?
I’ve spoken to a few premium theme authors and they tell me that because of the GPL, nothing stops someone from picking up Brian Gardners themes, changing the footer link and then undercutting his business by selling support at a cheaper price. Is that a valid argument?
Redistributing paid themes for free, which is ok under the GPL thus, rendering the business model of selling themes useless, as I understand it. Yet, that hasn’t happened and I wonder if that is because most end users are not aware of the GPL, all they see is the single-use multi-use licenses attached to themes
Is there a way where premium theme companies such as iThemes and you or Automattic can come to a compromise?
Lets say I have a template generator that outputs GPL themes, but has premium features. It could be used to create freebie themes which would be eligible to be in the repository, but since the generator outputs themes with a link back to my site which promotes the premium services, which in turn may be used for creating themes suitable for the repository, but again those themes have a link back to my site.
Is it true that the notion of Child themes which appears to be gaining momentum can be viewed as a loophole as far as the GPL is concerned considering these are themes which are purele CSS and Image based?
At what point do you stop accepting good themes that comply with the GPL because of a connection an author has with commercial themes. How far does it go.
If WP.org is about the community, why are decisions made unilaterally, rather than by the community?
Just out of curiosity, do you get annoyed sometimes by people blaming or mentioning Automattic for the decisions or things that take place for WordPress.org? I mean, Automattic and the WordPress project are two separate things.
What is your role with automattic and what is your role with the wordpress.org project and is their ever a conflict of interest between the two?
In your opinion, how far does the GPL go? CSS, images, phpfiles,
Why have you not used the WordPress development blog to bring forth the issues of GPL and various other aspects of the project?
This whole show has pretty much been dedicated to themes but how does all of this effect plugins, the plugin repository and such?
Episode 33 Kenn Bell of TheDogFiles.com as well as Jason Schuller who is one half of the Revolution 2 project. This was a great combination of guests as Kenn initially created the design for TheDogFiles site while Jason applied his code ninja skills to make the design a reality. Here are a couple of bullet points of discussion from this episode:
Brief discussion of WordPress 2.7
Why WordPress was chosen as the publishing platform of choice
The design and implementation of TheDogFiles website
The Revolution 2 project
Last but not least, since Jason is a prominent theme designer in the WordPress community, I took the opportunity to have a small discussion with him regarding the removal of 200 themes from the WordPress repository. We did talk a little bit about the GPL and we also discussed the Revolution 2 business model.
Announcements:Andy Peatling of the BuddyPress project will be our special guest on December 19th..
Episode 31 of WordPress Weekly featured a special 1 hour 26 minute interview with none other than Lisa Sabin Wilson, the author of WordPress For Dummies. Keith and I grilled Lisa on the topics of:
Writing a book for a piece of software which has an extremely fast development cycle
How different versions affect the publishing of the book
WordPress For Dummies The Second Edition
Lisa’s thoughts on WordPress 2.7
Lisa’s explanation on permalinks and slugs
Lisa’s take on premium themes versus free themes
much, much, more.
Keith and I really enjoyed our time with Lisa and wish her the best for the second edition of WordPress For Dummies.
Announcements: The two lucky recipients who will each receive a signed copy of WordPess For Dummies 2nd Edition are Chris Thompson and Lenire.
In this highly optimized episode of WordPress Weekly, I interviewed Michael Torbert who is more commonly known as hallsofmontezuma throughout the WordPress community. He is now the developer of the most popular plugin in the plugin repository, the All In One SEO pack. We discuss what it’s like to maintain an insanely popular plugin, how difficult it has been to work with the WordPress code, thoughts on SEO in general, and the question of the night went to David Peralty for asking if SEO could be damaged by mis configuring the plugin. You’ll have to listen to the show to get the answer. On top of that, I give my plugin pick of the week, the WordPress job of the week and much more on episode 24 of WordPress weekly.
News:
WordPress 2.7 is nearing feature freeze. Once that happens, we should start to see announcements in the dashboard regarding beta releases. Based on everything I have read, 2.7 is on schedule to be released on November 10th. If something major is discovered during the beta trials, the date of release will obviously be changed.
Didn’t get the chance to mention this on the show but I wanted to pass along a happy birthday to HackWordPress.com as they have turned 1 year old.
Feedback:
I cover feedback related to last weeks episode. We encourage any feedback you may have with regards to the show. You can either email me via jeffro at jeffro2pt0.com or you can simply leave us a comment on the blog.
Plugin Of The Week:
Jeff -Exclude Pages – This plugin adds a checkbox, “include this page in menus”, which is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the page will not appear in any listings of pages (which includes, and is usually limited to, your page navigation menus). Pages which are children of excluded pages also do not show up in menu listings. (An alert in the editing screen, underneath the “include” checkbox allows you to track down which ancestor page is affecting child pages in this way.) You could do this just as easily by adding exclusion arguments to the WP_LIST_PAGES function but this plugin takes those steps out of the process.
WordPress Job Of The Week:
This job was published on October 10th on the WeblogToolsCollection.com Job board. Sure Foods Living is looking for someone who can upgrade WordPress 2.1 to the current version. The individual at one point had someone to help them customize their site but that person is no longer available. Also, because of the upgrade, this person needs to change templates since the current one is not compatible with the latest version of WordPress. The potential client is asking for people who are qualified and for quotes on how much this project would cost. If you are interested in this job, please contact alison at surefoodsliving.com
Announcements:
Jane Wells who works for Automattic in the user experience/usability department will be our special one hour guest on Halloween night. That is Friday, October 31st, 2008. So if you’re interested in talking usability in WordPress, definitely mark this date on your calendar.
While not broadly advertised, I happened to catch Brian Gardner for about an hour to discuss his announcement regarding going open source. During the interview, we discuss topics such as the grey area of the GPL, his new business model, his new approach to themes, how similar his business model is to the WordPress.com model, the state of themes in WordPress and much more.
Here it is. The final episode of WordPress Weekly where I interviewed Alex King for about an hour. We discussed all sorts of things related to WordPress such as plugin development, themes, his plugins, trends online, why WordPress is so popular, comparisons between Drupal and WordPress and last but not least, questions and callers chimed in with their own questions.
Thank you to anyone who has downloaded and listened to the show during it’s existence. It’s been an interesting ride for 22 episodes and I’ve learned a lot in regards to broadcasting live within that period of time. Thanks to everyone who left me feedback and commented on the show. Special thanks goes out to everyone who happened to be a semi-co-host on the air with me and thanks for participating live every week.
What will I be doing now? I plan on bringing back Perfcast which is a podcast produced under the Performancing brand which will cover all things blogging. This means we’ll talk about SEO, monetization, plagiarism, copy writing, plugins, themes, news of the week and much, much more. I want to broaden my horizons and Perfcast will be the perfect model for what I want to do with my podcasting skills. I plan on doing the show live as I love community participation. Look for it to be launching somewhere near September.
This was one hell of an episode. For the first 35 minutes of the show, I interviewed Patrick O’ Keefe who is the author of the book, “Managing Online Forums“. Although this is a WordPress centric podcast, most users of WordPress either have a forum attached to their blog, run a forum seperate from their blog or at some point in time, dealt with running a forum. We discussed all sorts of issues related to managing a forum and then we dived into topics which were more in line with managing a community. There is some great information which was shared within this interview and I highly suggest giving it a listen. Thanks Patrick for stopping by.
After the interview, we dove into the news of the week. Near the end of the show, Darren Hoyt, author of the Mimbo Pro WordPress theme called in and I sort of did an impromptu interview with him. I asked him questions relating to the Mimbo Pro Theme, how successful it’s been since its release, his thoughts on theme clubs, the premium theme market and a wide assortment of other topics.
This is an hour and a half episode which is jammed pack with great information. Please enjoy the show and let me know what you think.
Wow. Episode 17 of WordPress Weekly went off pretty well. For those of you who couldn’t make it to the live version, Matt Mullenweg was the special guest but to my surprise, he also brought with him Andy Peatling, lead developer of the BuddyPress project. In this weeks episode, I had Matt answer the following questions:
What are the proper or improper ways of using the WordPress trademark. What are some of the acceptable uses of the WordPress logo.
Could you explain the revenue model for Automattic.
Here are a list of projects that are currently ongoing and I’d like for you to give us an update on each one if possible. Akismet, Bbpress, TalkPress, BuddyPress, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Theme Repository, Gravatar
What role will Warwick play in Automattic? (Why was he hired on)
Most of us in the WordPress circle realize the design firm Happy Cog had something to do with the new WordPress administration redesign. Could you please explain their role and give us an explanation as to how the new design came to be what it is today.
How much influence do the end users of WordPress have on the development of the WordPress.org project?
We’ve seen a complete UI overhaul on the back end of WordPress and the inclusion of automatic plugin upgrades. What is coming down the pike in terms of WordPress 2.6 and beyond?
I apologize up front for the first 15 minutes of the show. While the interview was taking place, Matt had accidentally pulled the chord out of the speaker phone device, causing it to reboot. He later called in with his cell phone which didn’t have the best connection. Shortly there after, the speaker phone device came back on and the rest of the show had good audio quality.
Matt and Andy answered a number of questions from the chatroom as well as from those who called into the show. Thanks to everyone who showed up and participated in the event.
Joining me this week on WordPress Weekly was Douglas Bell who operates Webmacster87.info as well as hosts the PHPBBWeekly podcast. In this episode, David and I chatted about a number of subjects including: