CodePoet has published a great interview with WordPress support extraordinaire , Mika Epstein also known as Ipstenu. The interview covers the basics of how she got involved with the web and WordPress. While the interview is great, I’ll take her last words as a great piece of advice.
Remember to have a life, remember you can say no, and remember to ask for help.
Thanks Mika for all you do to help make WordPress better. Be sure to check out her eBooks if you’re looking for help on using WordPress Multisite.
WordPress 3.5 has finally arrived thanks in part to the many people who have volunteered their time to make it happen. Over the next few days, users will be reporting problems and errors that they run into via the WordPress.org support forum. As with every major release, Ipstenu and the support team have put together a master list of issues being reported for WordPress 3.5. This thread is not meant to have any user feedback but is a curated thread that quickly highlights the known issues being reported as well as instructions on how to fix the problem.
As a side note, WordPress 3.5 continues the streak I’ve had in upgrading without any issues.
While WooThemes was experiencing a crisis that involved the loss of 6 months of data along with their main website going offline, they still managed to provide great customer service. During the entire ordeal, WooThemes kept customers and the public updated with what they knew and what they were doing to fix the problem via their status blog. Their status blog was updated multiple times a day. Many people commended the company on Twitter for doing such a great job and it’s definitely deserved.
I wish companies whether they be WordPress based or not would so something similar when a crisis hits. Customers want to know what happened, what’s currently happening, who’s doing what, etc. When a crisis hits and takes a website offline, people don’t want a canned response to a support ticket or email, they want information. Information keeps customers calm or at least, calmer then they would be without it. I personally hate that feeling I get when a company seems to shove me off and pretends as if nothing is wrong. As for information, inform the masses, not just a few. That way, everyone is on the same page. Use your company site as a means of controlling the conversation so people don’t have to guess what’s happening.
Created two months ago, the WordPress.org support forums has added a new section specifically for those that install and or use WordPress on a localhost. Installing WordPress onto a PC or Mac that can be used locally without an internet connection can at times become quite the endeavor. Thankfully, there are software suites such as WAMPServer and XAMPP that make the process of installing all of the necessary software to turn a machine into a web server very easy.
The following link has an assortment of community created tutorials for various setups to install WordPress on your local machine. There are also a number of links published within the WordPress Installation Techniques Codex Article.
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. ∞
Looks like there’s an exploit going around that appears to be similar in nature to the TimThumb vulnerability. If you noticed a bunch of “Cannot Redeclare” errors when browsing your website recently with eval code, chances are you’ve become a victim of this attack. Jeff Starr of DigWp.com and co-author of the book, Digging Into WordPress has laid out a series of steps on how you or consultants can clean up the mess that’s left behind. It’s also worth noting the following forum thread on the WordPress.org support forums where a number of people have been trying to investigate how this attack works.
According to Peter Bright over at the Technorati blog, the best thing about his iPhone is the WordPress App. While it works great for him, the latest version doesn’t play so nice on my particular iPhone 4. When I try to moderate comments, the app crashes. I’ll be publishing a report as well as a support query on the iPhone WordPress App support forums shortly. ∞
James Huff has published a list of this years WordPress support forum all-stars on WeblogToolsCollection.com. The list includes some familiar names such as Otto, mrmist, and andrea_r. Throughout the list, you get to find out a little bit about each person such as their history with WordPress and some even include their trade. Make no mistake about it though, everyone who helps out on the support forums is an all-star.
While in a session at WPChat.com last night, I talked with a few members of the WordPress community regarding what constitutes theme piracy as well as the role the WordPress.org support forums should take regarding commercial theme support. While I’m still not 100% what is piracy and what is not, I know for sure that the theme repository should not provide support for any commercial theme. However, upon further discussion, it appeared to me that it seems to have reached the point where perhaps the best course of action for the WordPress.org support forums as they relate to themes is to only provide support for up and coming developers or only for themes that are hosted within the repository. Supporting only themes that are within the repository should limit the amount of threads popping up asking for help decoding themes. Also, the notion of whether a theme is pirated or not is thrown out the window because you’ve eliminated support for everything but these two items.
The catch 22 in all of this is that the WordPress.org support forums exist to help and educate users where need be. Enacting the provisions set forth above would shut out a lot of users from receiving support. The provisions would also not solve the underlying problem of encrypted themes being used by hundreds of WordPress users. However, with stricter guidelines for theme support, perhaps the educational benefits would finally sink in to those who fall victim to using one of these encrypted themes.
Should The WordPress Support Forum Only Support Themes From The Theme Repository?
There has recently been a discussion on the WP-Forums mailing list concerning the following sticky thread. In a nutshell, there are two questions being considered. The first is whether decoding should be allowed on the forums. The second is whether this type of behaviour on the forum promotes the use of so called pirated themes. I say so called due to the fact that if the theme is licensed under the GPL, no pirating actually occurs.
Unfortunately, there are more bad places to download themes than good. Case in point, take a look at this screenshot from a Google search I performed looking for ‘Free WordPress Themes‘. The first two results are filled with base64 encrypted themes.
Poor SEO, or too many sites using themes with public facing links with encrypted code? Whatever the case may be, it’s evident that many users within the community are getting a hold of these themes and using them on their site, possibly not even knowing about the encrypted code within the footer.php or other files within the theme. In my opinion, I think that support of any kind for commercial themes should not be allowed on the WordPress.org support forum. Not only does it not make sense, but it’s a common courtesy to those companies that provide support as part of their value. While browsing through the Welcome Message that all new forum members should read upon signing up, I didn’t see any mention of commercial theme support. This would also make it very easy to just lock or delete threads concerning obfuscated code within commercial themes.
As for free themes that have been downloaded from the official theme repository and redistributed with the encrypted code or free themes in general, I’m not sure if decrypting those themes should continue on the forum or not. On one hand, it’s an opportunity to educate that user and explain why that code within a theme is bad news while on the other hand, it’s a never ending problem with no hard solution. I think education here is our best bet to fight against this with a detailed post on the WordPress.org blog but it’s not as if that will solve the problem, it will only make folks more aware.
There is no law saying you can’t place obfuscated code within a WordPress theme but it’s considered very bad mojo within the WordPress community. Obviously, these sorts of themes are not allowed within the theme repository but outside of the WordPress.org domain, it’s the wild wild west. It’s reached the point now where if a developer is releasing free themes, their best bet for trustworthy exposure is to have the theme on the WordPress theme repository. I suppose it’s a trade off. You can get a theme from the repository which doesn’t have the best variety and selection and know that it won’t have encrypted code or any other junk in it, or you can take your chances by finding a theme somewhere out on the net.
I’m interested in hearing what you folks have to say regarding the issue of themes, obfuscated code, and the WordPress support forum.
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