Really great article from my friend Hunter Walk on #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially relevant given how the US Chamber of Commerce has been tending to side with the MPAA and RIAA rather than actual small businesses, startups, and tech communities.
I've built my life on a free and open internet. As the co-founder of WordPress.org, a free software project that aims to democratise publishing, and the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com that hosts blogs from around the world in pursuit of the same goal, the proposed US legislation to regulate and censor the free and open foundation of the internet makes my mouth go dry with fear.
The rise of the web over the past two decades and the freedom to publish and express yourself online will be looked back upon as a cultural revolution.
We have gone from a world split between gatekeepers and media "consumers" to a world in which anyone regardless of geography, finances, social class, race, gender, or any other demographic identifier is free to engage with the rest of the world on their own terms.
That freedom is of paramount importance and must be protected.
That's why we're blacking out our websites on the 18th to raise awareness of this issue, and giving our users tools to do the same.
The tech world is fiercely competitive and companies seldom agree on anything, when you see so many united in solidarity on a single issue, you know there's something to it.
What concerns me the most about Sopa and the Protect IP Act is not that media companies and legislators want to have measures in place to protect copyright – for example we reply to and comply with DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices on WordPress.com when we receive them, it works well for everybody – it's that the authors of the legislation don't seem to really understand how the internet works.
The definition of domestic versus foreign sites shows a woeful lack of comprehension about how domains are used and how traffic flows on the internet.
Where do I stand? On the side of publishing freedom.
What do I hope for? That these pieces of legislation be set aside, and that any future legislation in this arena be drafted by people who understand how the internet works – and how it won't if they do the wrong thing.
My part of the set of op-eds on the BBC concerning today’s blackout. Check it out to also see Jimmy Wales, the MPAA, and the Chamber of Commerce. Hat tip to Jane for helping out with the above.
In-depth article by Siobahn McKeown that breaks down how commercial plugin developers are monetizing their efforts through the WordPress.org plugin respository. The article covers the guidelines that plugin authors should follow, examples of successful plugins as well as plugins that didn’t meet the guidelines, and various ideas plugin authors can try. One of the things I learned through that article is the existence of a detailed plugin guidelines page which didn’t exist before. It’s about time something like this was created as it answers questions up-front instead of leaving a ton of uncertainty up to the plugin author.
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SOPA Blackout adds a temporary 503 status and customisable page on your site to automatically join Web Blackout Day – 18th January 2012.
Stop SOPA Ribbon will place a black ribbon with the words “Stop SOPA” in the top right corner of your website, linking to the American Censorship website.
Note: Folks with WordPress.com blogs can join the SOPA/PIPA Protest via Settings -> Protest SOPA/PIPA in their Dashboards.
WP-Aletheia: Feedback allows you to easily gather feedback from your clients’ sites.
WOAH! Do not put symlinks to your uploaded files in a temporary cache directory. Nginx users running WordPress should beware if they followed these instructions and put a symlink to uploaded files in the wp-content/cache/ directory. I’m going to rewrite that page right now suggesting they use a different directory, possibly wp-content/uploads/ or maybe wp-content/files/.
WP Super Cache (and I presume other caching plugins) will delete everything in the cache directory. It’s like putting important files in /tmp/ where files are routinely cleaned out on reboot.
My replies on the thread above might paint me as a cold heartless bastard but I am sorry those websites suffered data loss. However I’m shocked that they put links to uploaded images in a folder containing temporary files!
Edit (20 minutes later): the codex page has been updated, thanks Westi for your help. It now recommends using wp-content/ms-filemap/ rather than wp-content/cache/
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by Donncha O Caoimh at January 18, 2012 11:07 AM under wp-super-cache
If you’re using the self installed version of WordPress and looking to participate in the internet blackout day today, check out the SOPA Blackout Plugin. This plugin contains flexibility so that you don’t have to turn your entire website into a black hole. Instead, you get to set blackout dates as well as a myriad of other options to configure when and who sees your blackout message. One of the nice things about this particular plugin is that when it’s deactivated, all of its settings will be removed.
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The blackout on WordPress.org is active. It is an interstitial, but you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to get the clickthrough link. It will go away if you click that link and be replaced by the Stop Censorship ribbon for 1 hour, at which point the cookie expires and you have to do it again. We’ll run the blackout for 24 hours. Yes, it will annoy you. I wanted to shut everything down, so count your blessings.
The reason we did this instead of a full shut-down is that there are many businesses and people who help drive the independent web that need access to the WordPress Codex, forums, plugin/theme repos, and APIs. We wouldn’t want to penalize them in our protest, so we just made it impossible to ignore instead.
The action on WordPress.com has also started. The primary home page of WordPress.com has blacked out all of its normal “Freshly Pressed” content. The WordPress.com official blog is sporting a ribbon — if we blacked out the blog, then WordPress.com bloggers would lose access to the post telling them how they can black out their sites using the option we deployed this evening. We launched on option tonight for all blogs on WordPress.com to either blackout (8am-8pm EST) or add a ribbon. In the couple of hours since we launched it, it looks like more than 10k have chosen full blackout, and around 3k have added the ribbon. People who chose blackout will have a ribbon before and after the blackout. Ribbons will remain until January 24, when PIPA comes up for vote in the Senate.
Both the WordPress.org and the WordPress.com blackout pages include a short message that includes a text link to the sopastrike.com site, the Fight for the Future video, the email form, the call form, and the non-U.S. petition form.
These things are what I spent the last consecutive 18 hours working on.
For more information, check out americancensorship.org.
As part of the SOPA Strike, here’s the homepage of WordPress.com today. We got started a little bit early, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to go more than 24 hours.
On WP.com we’ve activated an option for any of the bloggers there to put a ribbon on their site or black it out entirely, and we’ll be participating on WordPress.org as well.
WordPress.org is officially joining the protest against Senate Bill 968: the Protect IP Act that is coming before the U.S. Senate next week. As I wrote in my post a week ago, if this bill is passed it will jeopardize internet freedom and shift the power of the independent web into the hands of corporations. We must stop it.
On January 18, 2012 many sites around the web — from small personal blogs to internet institutions like Mozilla, Wikipedia, reddit, and I Can Has Cheezburger? – will be going dark in protest and to drive their visitors to sites like americancensorship.org to take action and help fight the passage of the Protect IP Act. So will WordPress.org.
If you want to join the protest by blacking out your WordPress site or applying a ribbon, there is now a variety of blackout plugins in the WordPress.org plugins directory. While joining the protest in this manner is laudable, please don’t forget to also make those phone calls to U.S. Senators — they’re the ones with the voting power.
Ian Stewart of Themeshaper.com wants to know, what do you really need in a WordPress starter theme? It’s an interesting question to ask these days because of the wide assortment of not only starter themes, but theme frameworks that are available. Two years ago, theme developers were using themes that they created themselves. While that still occurs today, many are using themes such as Genesis to build out websites.
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About two weeks about, we asked what your blogging resolutions were for this year. Similar to last year, most of you mentioned a plan to post more often in 2012.
There are many ways to find more things to write about out. On of the most fun is to just plug yourself into various social media outlets, like Twitter and Facebook, and just follow along to find topics that interest you. Instead of replying with a 140 character tweet, write a fully detailed post on your blog. Similarly, if you comment on someone else’s blog, you might want to write a blog post to go with it.
If social networking isn’t your thing, and you’d prefer just some direct inspiration, stop by The Daily Post or Plinky for daily challenges and topics that might inspire you to write a quick post.
If words really aren’t your thing, but you still want to post more often, why not post a few photos? This is especially easy and fun if you have a WordPress blog and a mobile device with a camera that’s supported by one of the available mobile apps.
Either way you approach it, there are plenty of ways to fill your blog with content this year, so get out there and start posting, and don’t forget to have fun!
by Lorelle VanFossen at January 16, 2012 08:42 PM under wordpress in the news
WP-Snippets has gone through a few changes as of late. Among them is a responsive design, a button to mark snippets as favorites, better ways of filtering snippets, and a few other enhancements. WP-Snippets is one of those really cool ideas that I talked about during the early days of WordPress Weekly and I’m stoked to see someone out there actually turn the idea into a reality.
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WordPress did not create the concept of content management. Such systems have been around since before the internet was a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. But true innovation rarely effects the greatest change. WordPress took an existing concept, made it highly useable, and introduced it to the masses (free of charge).
Via ManageWP – How WordPress Changed Content Management
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Event Organiser allows you to create and maintain events, including complex reoccurring patterns, venue management (with Google maps), calendars and customisable event lists.
Shiny Buttons will help you to generate CSS3 Button from you WordPress admin simply using a GUI.
Simple Google Adsense lets you simply add Google Adsense to your blog.
WP Marketplace is packed with all necessary features you must need to build a e-shop for your single product or a full featured complete market place.
Akismet filters out your comment and track-back spam for you, so you can focus on more important things.
FoxyPress is a custom plugin made to integrate FoxyCart e-commerce functionality into your WordPress website.
Joemobi allows you to create native Android and BlackBerry applications from your WordPress site.
PollDaddy allows you to create stunning surveys, polls, and quizzes in minutes.
Traffic Analyzer can be used to determine the number of visits to each post or page available in the site.
A surprisingly candid and funny report from CES, Fever Dream of a Guilt-Ridden Gadget Reporter.
Since its launch well over a year ago, WP-Snippets has quickly grown into the most popular one-stop-shop for useful WordPress code snippets.
WP-Snippets has finally received a major upgrade, making it even easier for you to find the code you’re looking for. The various snippets have now been broken up into categories, and more words can be filtered to narrow down the choices to just the snippet you need. If you find one that you’re particularly fond of, you can now favorite a snippet to leave it on the front page when you come back to the site. Speaking of the site, it now has a fully responsive design, so it looks great on your mobile phone when gathering snippets on the go.
If you’re a fan of WordPress and have a few snippets to share on WP-Snippets, there is also a new contribute page to satisfy your urge to share your knowledge.
There are tons of snippets available at WP-Snippets, so dive in and see what you can find, or help out by adding tons of your own.
Earlier this morning, I discovered that while moderating comments, a small little X icon appeared that I’ve never seen before. After inquiring on Twitter why WordPress never gave me a new feature pointer to explain to me what this feature was, I was told that it came with the newest version of Akismet. On January 5th, 2011 Akismet released version 2.5.4 of their plugin and amongst the changes was the addition of a button that allows site administrators to easily remove the commenter URL. This particular feature is something I’ve become used to using as it’s part of the Ajax Edit Comments plugin. I think it’s pretty slick that this feature is now available despite it not actually being in core. In fact, if you didn’t know any better or forgot that you recently upgraded Akismet, you might think that it was added with WordPress 3.3.1 like I did.
I use this feature quite a bit because even though a comment may come across as spam, it appears relevant enough to the post that I publish it without the benefit of the commenter URL. Some folks don’t like this behaviour and would prefer that either the comment is deleted or published in its entirety. Are you one of those people?
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WordPress consultant, Konstantin Kovshenin has published an excellent guide describing what theme/plugin lock-in is and how to avoid it. This is a topic I’ve been thinking about for a long time but have never been able to put into words for a post. The biggest culprit in my opinion when it comes to lock-ins are themes, especially commercial ones. These themes not only come with features that make it unique, those features sometimes store or alter data in a way that makes it very difficult to switch themes or even upgrade WordPress. The first comment on that post by Diane illustrates my point exactly.
This problem is even more pervasive than articulated here. The theme options of many commercial themes create functionality unique to that theme and then if you want to make a change, boy are you screwed. We see this problem with clients all the time.
Looking back at my history of using WordPress, choosing the right theme based on looks, options, and functionality was one of the toughest decisions I would have to make. I think I’ve only switched themes five times or less for both my personal site and WPTavern.com. Quite frankly, switching themes is a giant pain in the ass. Widgets become messed up, the layout is screwed up and although I like themes with options, I have to read the manual to figure out how to get the layout I like or at least, witnessed on the demo theme. Once I have a theme configured both functionally and aesthetically, I try not to do anything to disturb it. I get sick of the layout sometimes but the thought of switching themes and how much work that entails always settles me down into sticking with the current implementation.
Definitely read the comments at the end of the article as Mike Schinkel carries on an interesting conversation on ways or methods on which this entire situation could be improved.
Related posts:
Babylog is a sweet, illustrated theme for baby blogs featuring four color palettes and a customizable header graphic.
zeeBizzCard is a clean and elegant styled business card theme that fits perfectly for a sleek homepage for personalities, freelancers, entrepreneurs or small business owners.
by James at January 12, 2012 01:00 PM under wordpress themes
This is the tenth year I’ve blogged my birthday: 19, 20, 21, 22 (this one is funny), 23, 24, 25, and 26, 27. Wow… I don’t think I’ve ever done anything for ten years in a row before.
The public awareness of blogging comes and goes every two years, but for me it’s been a rock of intrinsic goodness that I keep coming back to. I think that’s why I love working on the platforms around it so much.
I was on the road a lot this year, covering about 190k miles over 245 days. (An average velocity of 21.6 mph.) I spent longer stretches in the same place, and often to places I had been before, which was nice for starting to appreciate the character of a given place. (52 cities and 12 countries.)
It was also one of my most productive years yet. The big resolutions from last year — launching Jetpack, Jazz Quotes, three major WordPress versions — all were completed, and as the team at Automattic grew and matured I was able to focus my time a lot more, even finding time to start coding again and switch (back) to Mac after 8 years on Windows.
In my twenty-eighth year I want to focus more on friends, family, and loved ones, something I’m running late for by doing this blog post, so will wrap this up now and see you all more later in 2012. 
Reminder: In lieu of gifts, I’m trying to raise $28,000 to help bring clean water to Africa. It’s ambitious but I think we can do it. Please chip in!
Over the holidays I chatted with Mathew Ingram about the future of the web in 2012 and beyond and he turned that into an opinion piece on GigaOM you should check out.
Dev4Press has an interesting post that contains performance benchmark numbers that show just how much of an impact certain plugins have on loading times within WordPress. Amongst the 35 tested plugins are bbPress, W3 Total Cache, WooCommerce and a few of the plugins developed by Millan. I as well as many others were shocked to see bbPress with such poor numbers thanks to it loading everything on every page load instead of only what it needs. Keep in mind that it’s not about how many plugins you have installed on your website, but which ones. It only takes one poorly coded plugin to cause you grief.
For some additional reading on how to optimize plugin loading, please see this tutorial by Millan.
Hat tip via WPCandy.com.
Related posts:
Splinder, a popular Italian blogging service, will be closing its doors on January 31st. If you’re Splinder user in need of a new home, fear not! Moving to WordPress is super-easy.
If you want to try a similar hosted blogging service, WordPress.com has you covered with a new importer, a handy guide, and free support if something goes wrong.
If you think it’s time to host your own blog, you might be interested in running a self-hosted WordPress.org blog. There are no Splinder importers for WordPress.org yet, but you can import to a WordPress.com blog, then export the resulting blog to any WordPress.org installation. Before you choose between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, make sure that you review the differences between the two.
Having been through two similar service closures myself, I recommend moving your Splinder blog as soon as possible. When those doors shut, they tend to shut for good, and you don’t want to be one of those who just waited too long. Even if you don’t plan on moving to WordPress, you might want to import into a WordPress.com blog now, just to preserve your content until you know what your plans are.
Earlier today, we released BuddyPress 1.5.3, with a number of fixes related to WordPress 3.3+. Shortly after release, a number of users let us know that one of these fixes – related to users changing their passwords – had uncovered a more serious bug with the way settings are saved. BuddyPress 1.5.3.1, available immediately, fixes this bug.
One the one hand – boo to Boone for letting the bug through! On the other hand – many thanks to blindMoe, luccame, and johnjamesjacoby for their help isolating and fixing it in very short order.
by Boone Gorges at January 10, 2012 09:18 PM under Community
You are an agent of change. Has anyone ever told you that? Well, I just did, and I meant it.
Normally we stay away from from politics here at the official WordPress project — having users from all over the globe that span the political spectrum is evidence that we are doing our job and democratizing publishing, and we don’t want to alienate any of our users no matter how much some of us may disagree with some of them personally. Today, I’m breaking our no-politics rule, because there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make sure you know about and understand, because it affects us all.
Using WordPress to blog, to publish, to communicate things online that once upon a time would have been relegated to an unread private journal (or simply remained unspoken, uncreated, unshared) makes you a part of one of the biggest changes in modern history: the democratization of publishing and the independent web. Every time you click Publish, you are a part of that change, whether you are posting canny political insight or a cat that makes you LOL. How would you feel if the web stopped being so free and independent? I’m concerned freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too.
You may have heard people talking/blogging/twittering about SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act. The recent SOPA-related boycott of GoDaddy was all over the news, with many people expressing their outrage over the possibilities of SOPA, but when I ask people about SOPA and its sister bill in the Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act), many don’t really know what the bills propose, or what we stand to lose. If you are not freaked out by SOPA/PIPA, please: for the next four minutes, instead of checking Facebook statuses, seeing who mentioned you on Twitter, or watching the latest episode of Sherlock*, watch this video (by Fight for the Future).
Some thoughts:
Blogging is a form of activism. You can be an agent of change. Some people will tell you that taking action is useless, that online petitions, phone calls to representatives, and other actions won’t change a single mind, especially one that’s been convinced of something by lobbyist dollars. To those people, I repeat the words of Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
We are not a small group. More than 60 million people use WordPress — it’s said to power about 15% of the web. We can make an impact, and you can be an agent of change. Go to Stop American Censorship for more information and a bunch of ways you can take action quickly, easily, and painlessly. The Senate votes in two weeks, and we need to help at least 41 more senators see reason before then. Please. Make your voice heard.
*Yes, the latest episode of Sherlock is good. Stephen Moffatt + Russell Tovey = always good
BuddyPress 1.5.3 is now available. This is a compatibility release to fix a few issues with WordPress 3.3+, and is a recommended update for all existing BuddyPress 1.5+ and WordPress 3.3+ installations.
For information on what’s changed, please see the 1.5.3 release notes. Download BuddyPress 1.5.3 from WordPress Extend or BuddyPress.org.
This is an aggregation of blogs talking about WordPress from around the world. If you think your blog should be part of this send an email to Matt.
For official WP news, check out the WordPress Dev Blog.
January 19, 2012 05:00 AM
All times are UTC.
Many websites are blacked out today to protest proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). From personal blogs to Wikipedia, sites all over the web — including this one — are asking you to help stop this dangerous legislation from being passed. Please watch the video below to learn how this legislation will affect internet freedom, then scroll down to take action.
Try one of these plugins on your WordPress-powered site to join the blackout today.
