Hi Bill. I know that as a geek, you really want to do everything yourself, which of course includes setting up your web site and doing a podcast, but sometimes you need help. I saw your “podcast” , but I have to tell you from one geek to another, that’s not a podcast, all you’ve done is post some WMA and MP3 files. I think you have a really great idea though, I bet you could have millions of subscribers if you had a real podcast, and I think you’re doing really great things so I’d love to help you.

So Bill, I would be happy to set up a web site for you to host a proper Podcast, for no charge. I would build this site on the free and open source platform – Wordpress. I would configure an RSS fed for you and even set you up with some great stats packages to know how many people are listening. You know what, I even have a spare Behringer PodcastStudio USB package which has a Microphone and a small mixer that is just perfect for podcasting – I’d be happy to send it to you at no charge. I assume you would have no problem getting listed in the Zune marketplace so I’ll let you handle that, but I will take care of the dirty details of getting your podcast listed in the iTunes podcast directory – you won’t ever have to talk to anyone from Apple. I bet we could even get your podcast featured on the front page.

This isn’t a joke Bill, I would be happy to help a fellow geek out. If you’re interested just use the call me button on the top right hand of this site, or drop me an email: podcast@teachmewp.com and let me know.

Thanks
Dave Holowiski

Well if you just listened to my rant about the importance of open source to wordpress, what I’m about to say is not a surprise… if you download a theme from anywhere but Wordpress.org, you risk doing really bad things to your web site.
It seems that if you google for wordpress themes, almost all of the top results host modified versions of wordpress themes, with obfuscated code inserted in them. This code might do something benign like just adding backlinks to other sites, but it could potentially do terrible things, like installing malware on your viewer’s computers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Never install plugins or themes from any site other than wordpress.org!

Check out the video and links to some articles below…

Stop downloading Wordpress themes from shady sites
How Downloading a Premium Theme/Plugin From the Wrong Place Can Ruin Your Site
Watch Where You Download That

I just found this cool plugin – the JanRain plugin. It basically allows users to sign into your web site using multiple authentication methods – Facebook, Twitter, Google, Open ID, Windows Live, and Yahoo!
Pretty cool, and it reduces the barrier to entry, making it much easier for users to leave comments and interact on your web site.
I might do a tutorial on this in the future, what do you think?

WordPress › JanRain RPX – Authentication from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and OpenID « WordPress Plugins: “JanRain RPX – Authentication from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID and OpenID”

(Via Wordpress.org.)

Also, today I just recieved two books to review for the podcast. Of course it will take me some time to read them, but I will be doing book reviews on the podcast in the future. Yay!

Check out this great article that lists a bunch of Facebook plugins for Wordpress. I will probably do an episode of the podcast talking about these plugins, especially JanRain RPX, which allows users to sign into your Blog using one of 6 different accounts (including their facebook account).

8 Top Facebook Wordpress Plugins – WebM.ag | Web Design Magazine

Social media is probably one of the best ways to promote and drive traffic to your blog, with the numerous API’s and sharing features the social media outlets are releasing it makes your job that much easier.”

(Via WebM.ag.)

Yes, it’s difficult to admit it, but I went over to the dark side yesterday. I’m setting up a new web site (teanoob.com if you must know) and going to be doing a podcast over there, and I thought I’d try out something different for a change. WordPress is fast, WordPress is easy, and I easily have 20 different WordPress sites running right now. But there are other CMS’s out there, and some of them are very popular, so I thought I’d find out why.

I did use Drupal once in the past but I really had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know any PHP or even what MySQL was so I was totally lost. This time, I came prepared. I selected Drupal pretty much at random – it was either Drupal or Joomla.

So the Installation of Drupal is fairly easy – pretty much the same as WordPress. You create a MySQL database and user, then run an installation script and it does the rest for you. I did this via SSH (command line) and I suspect if I had done it through cPanel it would have been much easier. I did run into two speed bumps. First, I had to change the configuration file to be world writeable (yikes!) and the same for a folder. I did make quite sure to change the permissions back when I was done.

Second, I had to go set up a cron job. Actually I haven’t set up the cron job yet, so I’m sure my site will explode in a massive firewall any minute now.

Once it was set up, I went on to select a theme, and had to add some modules (think Plugins). This was relatively easy, but there is no ‘one click install’ in Drupal like there is in WordPress, so I had to download and unzip the files by SSH (I could have used FTP too).

It did surprise me that I had to install a non-core module (think ‘third party plugin’) just to get pretty URL’s with the post name in the title. It was also kind of tough to wrap my head around modules, and blocks which are almost like plugins and widgets, but just different enough to make my head explode.

What I did like is that it is highly customizable. Once I installed the ‘Views’ module, I was able to build almost exactly the type of site that I want, actually I was able to build something in Drupal that I’ve been wanting in WordPress for quite a while. Have a look at the layout of teanoob.com (not the content, because there is none yet).

It will always show a box with the most recent video podcast episode, with normal posts going below it. There is also tons of extra places to put ‘blocks’ and a very configurable hierarchical menu system. All of this without touching any code. I am kind of enjoying it, although I’m sure I will have to get into some PHP coding once I try to figure out how to post Podcast episodes, and who even knows how the RSS Feed will work.

Anyway, I am enjoying using a different CMS for a change. I certainly wouldn’t recommend Drupal to anybody who doesn’t decide they need it on their own. It is much more “hands on” thank WordPress and definitely requires some Unix, PHP, and Apache skills that you can easily get by without in the WordPress world.

So that is my Drupal adventure. Stay tuned… once I get a working podcast I will post some more. I might even do a podcast episode about that. Nah… you don’t want that, do you?

I’m going to warn you now, this is going to be a long meandering rant, but it is vaguely wordpress related.

So today I was working on setting up my new office, and one thing I’m doing is putting up pictures i’ve taken of web celebrities that I saw speak. So far I have Leo Laporte (saw him at Macworld 2009), Matt Mullenweg and Timothy Ferriss (saw them at Wordcamp SF 2009). Then I started thinking, it sucks that I don’t have a picture of Cali Lewis (geekbrief.tv) since I’ve seen her speak twice.

So I got to watching some episodes of Geekbrief.TV that I have had sitting in iTunes for a while. I watched episode 620, and at around 2 minutes she starts talking about a wordpress plugin. Now the plugin sounds interesting, and it’s called Pretty Link. It’s basically a link redirector, kind of like tinyurl or bit.ly, but for your own wordpress site. Now I started wondering why she didn’t mention my favorite redirection plugin (simply called ‘redirection’) or any of the other 200 redirection plugins you can get from the wordpress plugin directory.

Then came the bombshell. It’s a $97 plugin (well, actually there is a free version available too but she never mentioned that). I won’t go into a rant about how wordpress is open source and how wrong I think it is to charge for plugins (or themes for that matter) especially if they do the same thing as freely available plugins – that’s just opinion, and if Cali thinks that paid plugins are a good thing that’s hers. My problem is this: at 2:05 she shows a link: geekbrief.tv/prettylink which uses the prettylink plugin to redirect (and cloak the link) from her web site to the purchase page for the prettylink plugin.

So here’s the problem. This is clearly not a commercial, Cali makes it clear she is telling us about “one of the coolest plugins I have ever found” and gives a short review of it. But the link she gives is an Affiliate link. If people go to the link I mentioned above, somebody (presumably Cali) gets a paid $. Now I have no problem with affiliate links in general, in fact I use them in my podcast, but I make it VERY clear that if you click on the link and purchase something, I get paid!

Cali Lewis took a blatant ad for Prettylink Pro and disguised it as an unbiased review (watch the episode). One can only wonder how many people purchased the plugin, strictly because of the trust she has built with her viewers. I guess she’s cashing in some of that trust…

If you want a free alternative to Pretty Link Pro, first search the Wordpress Plugin Directory for redirect, there are many excellent plugins. I’ve also asked for alternatives on Mahalo Answers, and funded it with $10 out of my own pocket. Be sure to check out the answers.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Let me get this out of the way right now – I am a wordpress Fanboy and this article is going to be a biased look at why wordpress is so great. 

Still there? Great.  

I used quite a few different CMS’s before I stubmled on Wordpress.  I used Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Revver is still unavailable. I’ve changed over the low resolution feed so that it no longer points to Revver.  This means regardless of which feed you are subscribed to in iTunes, you will now get the new high resolution version. 

This also means that only the 3 most recent episodes are available in the feed. If/When Revver comes back up, I’ll download all the old videos and make them available on this site. If not, then I’ll put them up when I have access to them, in about two weeks (I’m 5,000 miles away from them right now). 

Also, Revver, you still owe me $6 in advertising revenue. Thanks. 

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. I hope you all enjoy the new high resolution videos.

If you subscribe to the low resolution feed, I’d like to aplogoize because you haven’t recieved the most recent (soon the 2 most recent) episode. Revver is the hosting provider I use for this feed and they went down for maintinence over 24 hours ago. I had submitted the video the day before that, but it failed transcoding.

There is some speculation (as it seems there always is when revver goes down) as to wether they’ve completley gone under. Assuming the web site does come back up, it takes at least 1 full day for me to submit a video and have it live, this means in a best case scenario you will see episode 14 on Monday (i’ve been trying to release new episodes on Wednesday).

If Revver doesn’t come back I’ll switch the feed over to the high resolution feed. It only starts at episode 12 so you won’t be able to go back and get older episodes, but over the next few weeks I should be able to get them uploaded to my current provider (libsyn).

Of course this problem can easily be avoided. Just subscribe to the HD version of the show which is now in 1024×178 and looks great. You can either go to itunes and search for teachmewp or just click here. And please, don’t forget to leave a review in the itunes store for the new HD feed.

Thanks as always, faithful viewer.

I promised I would never apologize for putting out episodes late but here it is. In case you haven’t noticed there hasn’t been any episodes recently. I’ve been travelling the US for the last 4 months and it’s been tough to produce a video podcast, although I’ve come up with many new ideas, and recieved many great ideas from you the audience.
I really hope to release a new episode soon, but the reality is I probably won’t for the next two months. I have to be back in Canada by the beginning of march, so I do promise you a new episode early march. Until then, um, have fun?