This special episode of WordPress Weekly features four special guest interviews live from the WordCamp Chicago event. One of the interviews is with Matt Mullenweg. I apologize for the background noise in most of the interviews but I’ll be conducting better quality interviews in the future, especially once I get some decent equipment.
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This episode of WordPress Weekly is sponsored by, WebDevStudios.com. WebDevStudios is a website development company specializing in WordPress support and development services. Contact them today for help with your WordPress powered website.
As you read this, I’ll be heading into Chicago this weekend for the WordCamp Chicago event taking place Saturday and Sunday. I’ve decided to bring along my webcamera just in case I can stream a session or two. This time, I’ve installed a plugin which contains a higher quality video codec so whatever video I do end up streaming, it should be in higher quality. As far as chatting goes, I’ll be in the WordPress Tavern chatroom which is located at the top of the forum. However, in order to see and interact with me via the chatbox, you’ll need to register an account with the forum.
If you are going to be using Twitter today, please follow WPTavern as I’ll also be publishing snippets from the event this way as well. You can also keep tabs on the official hashtag for the event to get tweets from everyone who is in attendance.
With regards to video streaming. Keep an eye out either on this page to see the video or on my Ustream channel as I might be able to stream a session or two. This is depending on how well the internet connection holds up.
WordPress Weekly
I am not planning on having a live show during the event. However, I am bringing a digital voice recorder and will use that to conduct mini interviews with numerous people and then combine all of those interviews into an episode of WordPress Weekly. That’s the plan anyways.
Last but not least, if the information warrants it, I’ll be publishing full blog posts containing any information I find to be rather juicy. And with that, I’m off to pack my bags and hit the road!
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, special guests Brian Gardner and Lisa Sabin Wilson give us the lowdown on WordCamp Chicago taking place this weekend. Afterwords, David and I discussed the news of the week getting everyone back on track.
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This episode of WordPress Weekly is sponsored by, WebDevStudios.com. WebDevStudios is a website development company specializing in WordPress support and development services. Contact them today for help with your WordPress powered website.
While WordCamp San Francisco will be in it’s second day today with the focus on developer topics, Saturday proved to be a huge day in terms of news. I was not able to attend the event but I have every intention of making WordCamp San Francisco the one event I attend in 2010. Thanks to Twitter, I was able to pick up quite a few tidbits of information from the various presentations that took place, notably, Matt’s state of the word. In no particular order, this is what I have.
WordPress And WordPress MU To Merge – Matt stated that from this day going forward, the codebases for WordPress and WordPress MU would be merged together. In what version or how this would transpire was not addressed, only that they would be merged. If you want to talk about this news, join us in the forum.
GPL Compliant Theme Developers Page – Coming soon. That’s about all I could figure out from the event. Remember when I had Matt on the show and he said that they would not be adding a commercial GPL section on the repository because it would cause confusion? Well, I think they won’t be adding them to the same repository but I believe perhaps either a separate repository will be made available to them or, a dedicated page with a listing of Matt approved commercial GPL theme developers will be published and maintained on a regular basis. This is speculation on my part so we’ll just have to see what happens. Also, many people were wondering if commercial GPL plugins will get the same treatment. Time will tell I suppose. (P.S. Don’t debate any GPL crap in the comments or I’ll delete them).
Next weekend, I’ll be on my way to Chicago, Illinois for WordCamp Chicago. I’ve been psyched up for this event ever since it was announced mostly due to the people organizing it as well as the awesome list of speakers that will be doing presentations. People such as Liz Strauss, Jeremy Wright, and Micah Baldwin from Lijit. Of course, I’m also pleased to be able to get the chance to meet Matt again face to face.
For this event, I don’t plan on doing streaming video but I will be in chatbox in the Tavern Forum talking about what I’m seeing and hearing. I’ll also be tweeting the event. It looks like all the presentations will be in one room so the influx of tweets should be pretty high if someone says something interesting.
By the way, on this weeks episode of WordPress Weekly, I’ll have both Brian Gardner and Lisa Sabin Wilson on the show to give us a preview of the event.
I have yet to purchase my hotel room for the event. I’m going to try and get one as close as possible to the UBS Building which is where the conference is being held, that way I can walk to the event and not worry about driving. I’m terrified of driving through downtown metro areas so could anyone give me some hints on how to keep my sanity/composure?
In this episode, David and I discussed WordCamp Toronto which started yesterday and will last until Sunday May 10th. So far, it looks like not all things are going according to plan at the event as the venue has awkward placement of outlets, no dedicated video or audio equipment and expensive food. Hopefully, David has a better time the rest of the weekend.
We also briefly discussed the fact that we may go six entire months before the first major release of WordPress for 2009. A stark contrast to the past two years where by this time of year, we would be gearing up for the second major release. Also worthy of note is that so far, the need to push out a point release such as 2.7.2 has not occurred. Hope you enjoy this weeks episode.
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This episode of WordPress Weekly is sponsored by, WebDevStudios.com. WebDevStudios is a website development company specializing in WordPress support and development services. Contact them today for help with your WordPress powered website.
Each week from now on, I’ll be featuring a new listener poll question on WPTavern.com The poll is located in the sidebar on the right hand side of the site.
Last weeks poll question was: Do you take into consideration whether a theme is licensed under the GPL or not before you purchase it?
Out of a total of 27 votes, 13 of you said yes, 8 of you said no and 6 of you voted don’t care
This Weeks Poll Question Is: Do you think Premium themes have helped or harmed the WordPress community?
Plugin Picks Of The Week:
Jeff – Thumbnail Viewer – Thumbnail Viewer is simply used to overlay images on a page, similar to Lightbox JS. The javascript is from the Image Thumbnail Viewer code from DynamicDrive. The javascript included in Thumbnail Viewer from DynamicDrive is much faster than Lightbox JS, although not as feature packed, which is the entire point.Thumbnail Viewer works with the following image formats: png gif jpeg jpg bmp
Which version of WordPress introduced the ability to manage static pages?
Announcements:
On May 16th from 9am-5pm, join me at WordCamp Columbus taking place at Columbus State Community College. so far, there are over 100 people scheduled to be in attendance including Lorelle, Jane Wells, Noel Jackson, Mark Ghosh and more. Tickets cost $25.99 and I believe there are a few more left.
WordCamp Central which is the home base for all WordCamps has recently been redesigned. The site now features a large header which clearly explains a WordCamp is, eight upcoming WordCamp events and my favorite feature, the WordCamp events scheduled around the world presented on a Google map. Clicking on any of the blue pins generates a tooltip that provides date, location, website link, and the chance to generate directions to the event. Using Google Maps, you can easily figure out where hotels are near the event.
If you have time, stop by the redesigned site and check it out. While you’re there, find out if a WordCamp event is coming to an area near you.
I’ve been in talks with Brian Layman for a long time with regards to doing a WordPress meetup in the northern Ohio area. Ever since I attended my first WordCamp in Dallas, TX I’ve been wanting to tap into that experience, what better way to do that than a WordPress Meetup? Here in Ohio, I like to tell people that the closest thing to a tech conference we ever have is a LAN Party. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore as now there is a Podcamp Ohio along with WordCamp Columbus, two events covering topics I am very interested in.
The WordPress meetup will be taking place at 7PM EDT every fourth Thursday of the month at Office Space Coworking located in Akron, OH. This means the first event will be held on April 23rd, 2009. The building features WiFi internet, a cozy atmosphere and the equipment necessary to do presentations.
Please checkout their location page for information on where they are located and to figure out the directions on how to get their. This event is tailored in a location which is easily accessible between Cleveland, Akron/Canton, and Youngstown.
For the first meeting, there is no set agenda. I think if we all make it to the building on time, we’ll consider this a good start. Perhaps we’ll be able to talk about the release of WordPress 2.8 :)
In episode 49 of WordPress Weekly, I announced that the first person to give me the correct answer to the trivia question would win a free ticket to WordCamp Chicago. So far, no one has submitted an answer to the question. So with that said, if no one answers the question by the time the next episode airs, I will up the ante to two tickets. That is two tickets to WordCamp Chicago. These tickets were graciously donated to me to give away as prizes via Margaret Roach of Margaretroach.com Here is the trivia question:
What is the name of the software which is an enterprise edition based off of WordPress? Hint: stores all of its information in a set number of database tables meaning it has a normalized schema.
Update JLeuze has correctly identified the answer. Please see his comment here.
While I didn’t attend the event, I kept a close eye on Twitter for the WordCamp Denver hashtag as well as tuned into the BitWireLive video stream that was produced by Dave Moyer. As it turns out, WiFi connectivity during the event was not the greatest, especially during the sessions that took place before lunch. I received a tweet from one of the event organizers who told me one of the WAP devices was failing under heavy load which was the cause of most of the network issues. However, they must have fixed it because after lunch, the volume of Tweets really picked up. Here are my cliff notes of what I learned during the event in no particular order.
One of the messages I saw come across Twitter was this:
afhill: coming in a few weeks: buddypress for a single wordpress install (don’t need wordpressMU)! #wordcampdenver
This message was made by someone attending the BuddyPress session. If this is indeed true, this is exciting news. I feel that WordPress MU is actually a barrier to entry with regards to mass adoption of BuddyPress.
*UPDATE* Community member andrea_r published this link in the Tavern forum with more information related to this quote.
I did not get to witness any sessions but Jane Wells did stop by the BitWireLive desk for an interview with Dave Moyer and Lorelle Van Fossen. I was very intrigued by what Jane had to say. It looks like she is the one responsible for reshaping the way in which development for WordPress is heading in terms of user driven development. I heard her mention that they do indeed want to rework the Ideas forum which if you’ve been following this blog will know I’ve been harping on this fact. She also said that at some point in the future, Trac will be expanded to cover more areas for which end users can help contribute to WordPress such as graphics design, low priority bugs, etc. She also mentioned that they are working on revamping the Widget Management area and at this point, they may put the foundation in place in 2.8 and then finish it off in WordPress 2.9.
One of the sessions at WordCamp Denver dealt with Licensing. Most likely the topic of the GPL and other ways of licensing works as they relate to WordPress and the first question someone asked during this session involved selling premium themes and plugins. While I was not able to figure out the complete answer to this question, I found a few tweets which mentioned Matt continued with his stance that the code is not valuable, but the services built around the code is what provides the value. Personally, I can’t wait to watch this session if it ends up on WordPress.TV.
It was hard for me to hear Micah of Lijit during his interview with BitWire Live but from what I could tell based on his interview and their interview with Tara Anderson of Lijit, that company is working on great things. Especially their WordPress plugin.
Last but not least, Dave Moyer did a presentation on WordPress and podcasting. Judging by the tweets during his sessions, he was a smashing hit. Although there were quite a few people who kept discussing his age. I’m not sure what age has to do with the information he provided but it looks like his session was right up there in terms of Ben Huh’s icanhascheezeburger presentation as well as Matt’s keynote.
Conclusions
That is what I got out of the event without even attending. Certainly one lesson to be learned if you are hosting your own WordCamp is to make sure that the place has adequate bandwidth for the approximate number of people attending. I’ve been told that there will be quite a few videos from WordCamp Denver uploaded to WordPress.TV once they have been edited. Special thanks to Dave Moyer and the BitWire team for providing the live video stream coverage of the event.
This special episode of WordPress Weekly features four special guest interviews live from the WordCamp Chicago event. One of the interviews is with Matt Mullenweg. I apologize for the background noise in most of the interviews but I’ll be conducting better quality interviews in the future, especially once I get some decent equipment. 
