teachmewp.com » Article

The Importance of Open Source to WordPress (V2)

Dave — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:06:01 +0000

Wait, haven’t I already made this post? Well, yes, but it’s a hot issue again.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the controversial meeting of Matt Mullenweg and Chris Pearson (creator of the Thesis theme).
Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis, A Leading WordPress Theme?(sorry the embed code doesn’t work so you’ll have to head over there to listen to it.

Please listen to the whole thing. It’s amazing how Chris chooses to ignore the GPL, and disrespect the whole WordPress community, simply because he doesn’t think the GPL makes business sense.

Chris – if you don’t think the GPL makes business sense, go find another project to develop your themes for. You’ll have to find a CMS that runs on Windows Server & SQL server, running IIS. Yeah, there’s a big market!

I love the part where Chris claims he is one of the most important people in the WordPress community. Before tonight i’d never heard of him. For a good counter-point, check out The 10 most important people in WordPress

The solution? According to Chris: “There’s no resolving this. Either you sue me or you don’t”

So people, please stay safe, use GPL themes, hug a WordPress developer and help make the world a better place!

Matt’s Response
Jane’s Response

Why WordPress is no longer a Hobby for me

Dave — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:17:54 +0000

UPDATE: The video is now available!

WordPress is great software, which allows people who don’t have much technical knowledge to publish their information on the Internet. For me, the WordPress software was a really interesting ‘gadget’, a cool piece of software that was really easy to hack around with, modify, and yes even to make a bit of money with.

The vast majority of the Internet is either outright spam, or thinly veiled money making schemes, and a high percentage of this crap runs on WordPress (because it’s so easy!). This can be frustrating – I know that some of the viewers of my podcast are using the tutorials to set up spam sites, autobloggers or other such crap. Several times I’ve thought about quitting the podcast because of this.

On May 1, that all changed. For the second time I made the trek to San Francisco for WordCamp 2010, which is basically a gathering of WordPress users and fanatics. I knew this one was a ‘must attend’ because Richard Stallman, guru of Free Software was speaking. Now, Richard (aka: rms) has an important message about the importance of freedom and the role open source plays. And WordPress is open source software, which is why it is such a huge success. But rms himself came across as a childish, religious fanatic, and to be honest, I spent most of his presentation laughing and mocking him on Twitter.

(and no you can’t watch his talk. He had the stream turned off, because they weren’t streaming in an ‘Open’ video format)

I was kind of bummed. The big talk of WordCamp was a flop.

Then came the ‘lightning sessions’ – quick 5 minute talks. Kudos to the organizers for trying something new, but mostly it was ‘in person’ spam.

Finally Rinat Tuhvatshin got up on stage and started talking about his little WordPress MU site that he runs. Kloop.kg (or Kloop.info for english version). In Kyrgyzstan. Actually it’s more of a new site. They get young people, and teach them how to be reporters, and these people report the news on the web site. Now Kyrgistan isn’t exactly a stable country – just check out Google News. Human rights issues and violently oppressed protests are not uncommon. Kloop.kg reporters report what is really happening, and the Government isn’t happy about it.

Rinat explained how he once received a call from a representative of the government, who told him he had to take down a certain post or he would be killed. We (the audience) all burst out laughing. But he wasn’t joking and the laugh died off quickly, as the audience realized this wasn’t just another ‘SEO Expert’ or Author with a book to sell. This was a man who was willing to risk his life to get the word out about a repressive government. This was a man who had received and defied death threats from his own government. Who’s reporters were risking their lives every day, so that they could post updates to their WordPress blog. How stupid we all were to laugh.

This was the most serious, important talk of the day and it was only 5 minutes long. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, myself included.

Maybe 25% of the WordPress blogs out there are spam. Maybe 50 or even 99.999% could be spam – who cares. As long as there is at least one person like Rinat and his band of reporters, who are risking their lives to get the word out about important stuff (like a repressive government), the WordPress project is worth contributing to. If 29,999 of the episode views of my podcast were spammers trying to build better faster Viagra spam sites, and only one single view of one single episode helped one single person make life a little better for his or her fellow citizens, that makes this Podcast and all of the thousands of dollars (yes that much) I’ve spent worth it.

That’s why WordPress is no longer a hobby or cool gadget for me. WordPress is an obsession. WordPress is a world changing tool. WordPress is serious, and important. WordPress is a software program that IS making the world better, and not just in some theoretical way.

At the time of this writing, both Kloop.KG and Kloop.info were down. The last twitter post on the kloopinfo account was over a month ago.

Do you want to contribute to WordPress? The Contribute page at Wordpress.org. has many ways you can contribute, even if you aren’t a programmer. Please, help make the world a better place by contributing to WordPress!

An open letter to Bill Gates

Dave — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:00:46 +0000

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

The danger of downloading themes!

Dave — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:56:48 +0000

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

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

Dave — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:30:51 +0000

Update: There is now a Video Tutorial for installing and configuring this plugin.

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!

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

Dave — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:08:23 +0000

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.)

I used Drupal, and I liked it

Dave — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:16:35 +0000

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?

Cali Lewis Shame on You

Dave — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:24:38 +0000

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.

Why I love Wordpress

Dave — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:49:29 +0000

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 Joomla for a while. I’ve been told it’s very powerful and you can do all kinds of things. I couldn’t ever figure it out though (and my job is figuring out things). I’ve used PHP Nuke, wow what a POS, NEXT! Where I used to work, we used DotNetNuke. First thing it’s based on .net from microsoft. Second thing, most of the plugins you have to pay for. Third thing it looks like absolute crap! We used it as an Intranet site and it was so terrible that users wouldn’t even visit the site. I even used Scoop for a brief time. Definetley a very interesting CMS, but ultimatley like the others – hard to use.

So on to Wordpress. Why do I love Wordpress? Let me count the ways…

1. Wordpress is Open Source, and almost all of the plugins, and most of the Themes are free and open source. Because of the open-ness of both Wordpress and it’s themes and plugins, it’s extremely easy to customize. It’s hard to find a user who hasn’t gone into their theme to change something. This really is a big deal. Because it’s easy to understand, it’s easy to change and easy to maintain. Maybe having a CMS written in Javascript is techncially better (I don’t think so) but nothing beats good old PHP, CSS and XML for being easy to understand.

2. Wordpress is designed for users. Unlike those other CMS’s, wordpress is designed for users, not web developers. I’ve done a manual install of wordpress before, and it’s something I would feel comfortable walking my mom through over the phone. Now with 2.7 it’s almost too easy to install plugins (Please Automattic, do the same with themes). And the dashboard makes it trivially easy for even the simplest of users to post new content and create pages.

3. It just works. Maybe I’ve been lucky but I’ve never really had problems with wordpress breaking. You can add all the plugins and themes you want and it keeps working just fine. Sure, from time to time I have done something incredibly stupid that’s totally broken my web site but it’s always been easy to fix.

Mostly I love Wordpress because it’s so darn easy to use and customize. I have absolutely no problem setting up a wordpress site and handing it off to a family member to use, knowing that I’ll have to support it.

Still with me? Good. If you haven’t yet, download and install Wordpress today.

Goodbye Revver, you still owe me six bucks.

Dave — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:56:03 +0000

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.

Apologies to the low resolution (revver) subscribers

Dave — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:55:51 +0000

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.

On Hiatus?

Dave — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:49:37 +0000

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?

Wordpress Search Engine

Dave — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:17:55 +0000

Thanks to Google CSE (Custom Search Engine) I’ve created a search engine specifically for wordpress. Type in your query and you will receive wordpress related results!
Watch for a new episode of teachmewp.com showing how you can create your own search engine, and even make some money doing it!
Just type in the search engine below.

Another episode is coming soon

Dave — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:07:26 +0000

Don’t despair, a new episode of the wordpress video howto podcast is coming soon – How to make money from your wordpress blog, including tiips for wordpress.com users. I have the video recorded and I just need to finish editing it. . . . → Read More: Another episode is coming soon

Wordpress for the iPod Touch (and iPhone too)

Dave — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:38:09 +0000

Woohoo a free Wordpress app was just released for the iPod touch (and iPhone too). Expect this to be featured in a podcast soon

A cool PHP Script

Dave — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:25:15 +0000

Here is a PHP script I put together for a web site I am working on. It retrieves a random image from my flickr stream. The nice thing is you can treat the php file like a image. I needed this so that I could reference it from a css file. Enjoy, but don’t forget to change the flickr information to your own.

$file =file_get_contents(‘http://www.flickr.com/badge_code_v2.gne?count=1&display=random&size=m&layout=v&source=user&user=19617468@N00&tag=&group=19617468@N00′) preg_match(‘#

$photo = $r[2];
$contentType = ‘Content-type: image/jpeg’;

header ($contentType);
readfile($photo);
?>

Welcome

Dave — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:36:29 +0000

Welcome to the Wordpress Video Howto site.

I hope you will find this a valuable resource for all of your wordpress needs. Please check back regularly for new videos and articles. . . . → Read More: Welcome