The WordPress Podcast

Episode 44: WordPress 2.6 released, iPhone app, XML-RPC controversy, theme repository, and an exclusive interview with Woopra developers

zaphod — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:27:48 +0000

Okay, here’s the episode…

I’ll be writing the show notes when I have some time.

Fair warning: The entire episode clocks in at over 1 hour 20 minutes because we had so much material to slog through. Rest assured, as soon as I am able, I’ll be posting it.

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Episode 43: Out of date blogs hacked, All-In-One SEO gets dropped, then picked up

zaphod — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:58:55 +0000

Brian Layman, of b5media, joins Charles as co-host, filling in for Jonathan Bailey who’s in Newcastle-upon-tyne, United Kingdom speaking at the 3rd International Plagiarism Conference.
Some blogs running older versions of WordPress were hacked. Peter offers a way to have your site notify you when things are changed.
Support for the popular plugin All in One SEO Pack was dropped by its author, only to be picked up a few days later by a new author.
Crazy Horse is a development branch of WordPress to further the admin overhaul begun by WordPress 2.5. (PDF document)
Automattic Dev Andy Skelton introduced Batcache, a non file-based caching solution based on the one WordPress.com uses.
HyperDB updated for compatibility with WordPress trunk at revision 8094.
Get well soon, Lorelle!
Plugin: Author Highlight allows you to style the comments made by you or other authors differently than regular commenters.
Plugin: WP Security Scan scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: All In One SEO, Andy Skelton, Author Highlight, Automattic, b5media, Batcache, Brian Layman, Charles Stricklin, Crazy Horse, HyperDB, Jonathan Bailey, Lorelle, Plagiarism Today, WP Security Scan

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Episode 42: Our favorite plugins, Ask Matt, WordPress Theme Design

zaphod — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:34:01 +0000

Automattic CEO and WordPress project leader Matt Mullenweg was a guest on episode 17 of the WordPress Weekly podcast with Jeff Chandler, and during the show, I asked Matt why WordCamp San Francisco, scheduled this upcoming August 16th at the Mission Bay Conference Center on the campus of the University of California at San Francisco, would be only one day instead of two, as it had been in previous years, as well as the overlap between it and the New Media Expo.
WP Comment Remix is an entrant into the current Weblog Tools Collection plugin competition and it promises to bring “a plethora of new options and features to WordPress.” Ronald Huereca reviewed it at Weblog Tools Collection Videos. Some of the features it includes are:
1. Reply and quote links for commenters - You can add a Reply link to each comment, which, when clicked, adds “@OriginalPoster”, and links it to the anchor of that comment. Also, clicking the Quote link has a similar action to the Reply link, but it adds the entire comment in a blockquote tag.
2. Comment Ordering - You can choose how you want to order the comments for your readers - By Author name or Date, and Ascending or Descending
3. Either separate or remove trackbacks- You can choose to separate the Trackbacks from the comments and move them to the bottom of the list, or remove them completely
4. Comment Tags - allow your readers (and you) to find comments more easily, instead of having to read through potentially hundreds of comments in a single post to find something specific
5. Mark comments as ‘In Need Of Reply’ - adds a button, similar to the “Awaiting Moderation” button that shows up on the right hand side of the Comments menu link. The new button tells you how many comments are in need of a reply, and when clicked, takes you to a list of those comments.
6. New comment display links, allowing you to edit, reply, quote or mark as replied each comment directly from the comment admin page
7. Added AJAX functionality allows you to edit pages and posts directly from the management admin pages
8. Adds 4 new widgets allowing you to display recent comments along with gravatars, another to display recent trackbacks, one to display the most active posts based upon comment count, and one to display your more frequent commenters, along with their gravatars if you so choose, as a way of recognizing your more devoted readers. Each widget is tokenized, meaning you control the look and feel.
WordPress Theme Design written by Tessa Blakeley Silver and published by Packt Publishing is a recently published, 244-page book detailing just about everything you’d need to know about designing and coding themes for WordPress. It’s current as of version 2.5, and is available in paperback and as a digital download as well.
No WordPress.com until Lorelle recuperates from surgery.
Eric Amundson kicks off our inaugural “Ask Matt” segment with the question, “What resources are there about using WordPress as a Content Management System?” Matt directs Eric to a draft on the Codex for more places to look.
Dave Jackson asks what our “Top 10 Plugins” are. We oblige, although Jonathan and I shared four identical choices (five if you count Jonathan’s waffling between Defensio and Akismet), so here are our combined “Top 16 plugins” (in no particular order):
Mark Ghosh’s comments during episode 39 of The WordPress Podcast recorded live at WordCamp Dallas 2008 about Bad Behavior and high server usage prompted a response from the plugin’s author, Michael Hampton.

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | 19 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Akismet, Ask Matt, Automattic, Bad Behavior, Dave Jackson, Defensio, Digital Fingerprint, Eric Amundson, FeedBurner, FeedSmith, Fluency Admin, Jonathan Bailey, Mark Ghosh, Matt Mullenweg, Michael Hampton, New Media Expo, Packt Publishing, Photo Dropper, Plagiarism Today, podPress, Related Posts, School of Podcasting, Seth Godin, Share This, Subscribe to Comments, Tessa Blakeley Silver, Weblog Tools Collection, What Would Seth Godin Do?, Woopra, WordCamp, WordPress Admin Drop Down Menu, WordPress Database Backup, WordPress Theme Design, WordPress Weekly, WP Ajax Edit Comments, WP Comment Remix, WP Super Cache

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Episode 41: WordPress 2.5.1 released, Webware 100

zaphod — Mon, 19 May 2008 03:03:13 +0000

I’ve been busy with other things and sitting on this episode, which Jonathan and I recorded several weekends ago. I’ve finally gotten around to editing it down and it includes:

WordPress 2.5.1 was released April 25th, and includes a significant security fix, so you should update as soon as possible if you haven’t done so already. This version does break the reset password feature, however. (Thanks to Ryan McCue for providing a patch file.)
Matt Mullenweg announced Sphere integration into blog content to display related posts, and automatic theme-creation for photo bloggers at the Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco.
WordPress and WordPress.com are Webware 100 award winners in the Publishing category.
Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror took a lot of heat for his characterization of WordPress as a “Destroyer of CPUs“, and the subject of caching reared its ugly heat once again.
Raj Dash loves WordPress, but hates WordPress 2.5. Jonathan asks for a way to change the color scheme of the admin panel.
A new search feature allows for the search of over 3 million WordPress.com blogs. Search results can be ordered by relevancy, our magic secret sauce algorithm that’s the default, or by most recent, so you can see the latest and greatest on any given subject. There are also language-specific engines for every language WordPress.com supports.
WordPress.com now includes many of the same features available to WordPress 2.5 users.
WordPress.com blocked in Brazil.
When you attempt to login to a WordPress account, you are given fairly specific error messages if you enter the username or password incorrectly. This can be helpful to an attacker if they are trying to guess usernames and/or passwords. Login Error Cleanup simply returns the message “Error” if the combination submitted is not valid.
Widgetized Admin Dashboard is a Wordpress Plugin for 2.5+ that lets you edit the Wordpress Dashboard in the Design > Widgets area. It also removes the WordPress Developer News and WP Planet News that many consider to be “Dashboard Spam” and lets you see exactly what you want to see on your dashboard.

Episode 42 was also recorded a while back and I’ll be publishing that over the next week or so.

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Sphere, Webware 100, WordPress 2.5.1, WordPress.com

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The Voices of WordCamp Dallas

zaphod — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:14:56 +0000

Note: I didn’t mean to publish this to the podcast feed, but I guess podPress assumed it was a episode and published it anyway. Cest la vie! So, consider this lagniappe. - Charles

This is a collection of voices and interviews from WordCamp Dallas 2008 with Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress and the The WordPress Podcast.

Lorelle wandered around during the breaks at WordCamp Dallas asking participants for their opinions on the weekend event and their thoughts on WordPress and blogging in general. Everyone was so open and sincere in their appreciation of the event, excited to meet Matt Mullenweg and the rest of the Automattic team, and the top notch speakers, some of whom shared their thoughts on the event with me in this interview.

The variety of bloggers present were incredibly diverse, covering everything from life blogging to cooking to high technology. DB Ferguson of No Fact Zone, one of the top Steve Colbert fan sites shared her blog post and thoughts about sitting behind the famous Matt Mullenweg during the conference - close enough to touch!

Dorian Karthauser of DK Enterprises had only been blogging for three weeks, one of the “youngest” bloggers present. She took time out to share her thoughts on being new to blogging and WordPress, citing some of the challenges she’s had learning how to blog with WordPress as well as the lessons she took away from the conference.

Charlene Mullenweg shared some thoughts and insights into being the sister of one of the most famous “Matts” around, and about her own experiences blogging, and being in a blogging family.

Lorelle enjoyed talking to people about their thoughts on WordCamp Dallas, WordPress and their personal experience with blogging. Sit back and enjoy the next 32 minutes of insights and lessons learned.

The voices include:

00:10 Bill Sholar of Webfratelli
00:37 Dan Bates
00:59 Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today
01:45 Ptah Dunbar
02:34 Bryan Lee
03:14 Cory Miller of iThemes Media
03:44 Henry Pugsley
04:07 Kerry Webster of WEBsmith internet consultants
04:44 Wendi McGowan of Wendistry, LLC and Scott Ellis of vsellis.com
05:36 Dave Curlee and Katherine Curlee of RealCookN.tv
06:28 DB Ferguson of No Fact Zone
07:48 Alexander Frison of Not a Niche
09:18 Tony Cecala of Holistic Networker
10:04 Mike Borschow of MetroQ.com
11:55 Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection
12:30 Dorian Karthauser of DK Enterprises (beginner blogger)
17:35 Charlene Mullenweg (sister of Matt Mullenweg)
23:15 Jim Halloran of AlcoholismDiseaseFree.com
24:13 Ryan Joy and Michelle Greer of Volusion and Michelle’s Blog
26:41 Kathleen Ratliff
27:14 William Addington of Williamedia
28:31 Doug Smith of smithsrus.com and Hide a Pod
29:25 Ronald Huereca of Readers Appreciation Project and Weblog Tools Collection
30:23 Dimitri (blog not public - biotech)

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dallas, WordCamp, WordPress

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Episode 40: Technorati and older versions of WordPress, Woopra, Weblog Tools Videos

zaphod — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:55:31 +0000

In this episode of The WordPress Podcast:

Jonathan and I briefly discuss our experiences at WordCamp Dallas
Technorati has decided to not index vulnerable and exploited WordPress versions
Will Apple bundle WordPress into the iPhone?
I interview John Podzazides about Woopra
I interview Mark Ghosh about Weblog Tools Videos
WordPress Dev Donncha O Caoimh’s Theme Tester plugin
AJAXed WordPress plugin
Matt Mullenweg agrees to a “Ask Matt” Q&A segment in future episodes

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Episode 39: WordPress 2.5 released - Live from WordCamp Dallas

zaphod — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:28:40 +0000

I’d intended to release this episode during the week of March 30th, days after it was recorded live at WordCamp Dallas, but problems with the recorded audio prevented doing so. The audio you’ll hear was actually ripped from the video John Pozadzides released, so thanks, John!
Joining me on the dais were Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, Mark Jaquith of b5media, later Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection, and later still, Matt Mullenweg of Automattic. Lorelle Van Fossen was nice enough to run around handing the wireless mic around so people could comment and ask questions. Subjects discussed and links to items mentioned in this episode include:

WordPress 2.5 had been released exactly 24 hours prior. Some people have experienced problems with IE7 and other plugins. Expect 2.5.1 within about a month.
Beginning with WordPress 2.2 incoming links were changed from Technorati to Google Blog Search. If you’d prefer to revert back or use some other link reporter, find the Incoming Links Box’s “Edit” link in the Dashboard and change it to the RSS feed of your choosing.
Issues with “disappearing plugins” relate to the plugin updater’s requirement that plugin authors build in additional functionality to work properly with the updater and submitting it to the plugin directory.
Mark Jaquith discusses the genesis of his Comment Inbox plugin. Lorelle chimes in with Comment Ninja, a Firefox Greasemonkey script.
We discussed security, including the possibility of an independent review of the core, as well as the direction themes and theme development might take in the future.
Matt expressed a desire for improved client-side JavaScript performance.
Ronald Huereca asked an interesting question about how developers might store data without creating new database tables.
Scott Ellis asked for examples of WordPress being used as a CMS or other unusual uses, and the panel offers up Automattic’s Publisher Blog, Trumors and 71 Miles, amongst others.
Rick Ankrum’s question about changes made to the default theme leads to an interesting throw-away comment by Mark Ghosh concerning a possible file integrity-checker making its way into future versions of WordPress.
Jill McKeever’s question about image borders and a “word wrap button” stumps the panel. (Did we ever come up with an answer for this?)
Someone asks about the future of Sandbox, and the possibility of incorporating its best features into the core. Several themes are discussed, including the Options theme and Regulus.
Matt expressed frustration with the way WordPress handles menus as static pages and sub-pages, raising the possibility of choosing which items appear in the navigation menu. Mark Jaquith brings up his Page Links To plugin which allows you to point pages and menus to links outside of your blog’s domain.
Matt also expressed frustration with the disparity between the image uploader and inserting an image from within the WYSIWYG editor, and brought up the possibility of an easy “image caption” function.
Jeff Chandler’s frustration with the perception of WordPress not being able to withstand the “Digg effect” leads to a minor debate on caching. Matt effectively debunks the issue, blaming bad server configurations and cautioning against reliance on WP-Cache and WP-Super Cache. Mark Ghosh cautions against the use of Bad Behavior for high-traffic sites.

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Comment Ninja, Digg, Firefox, Google Blog Search, Greasemonkey, IE7, Internet Explorer, John Pozadzides, Jonathan Bailey, Lorelle Van Fossen, Mark Ghosh, Mark Jaquith, Matt Mullenweg, Options theme, Regulus, Sandbox, Technorati, WordCamp, WordCamp Dallas, wordcampdallas, WordPress 2.5

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Video: Episode 39 Live from WordCamp Dallas

zaphod — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:22:58 +0000

Jonathan and I were fortunate to be joined by Matt Mullenweg, Mark Jaquith and Mark Ghosh for this live recording of The WordPress Podcast during the 2nd day of WordCamp Dallas. Since WordPress 2.5 had been released only 24 hours earlier, we discuss amongst ourselves and the attendees our thoughts on the admin and Dashboard redesign, the streamlined workflow, the new media uploader and some issues those who’d updated the night before had with Internet Explorer and some plugins.

We also discussed an idea Mark has expressed about a plugin he’d written to create a comment moderation panel and the implications it has on future WordPress versions.

We’ll be posting an audio-only version of this episode to the normal feed a little later on, but for now, here’s the video.

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Charles Stricklin, Jonathan Bailey, Mark Ghosh, Mark Jaquith, Matt Mullenweg, WordCamp, wordcampdallas, WordPress 2.5

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Cali Lewis & Neal Campbell at WordCamp Dallas

zaphod — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:07:59 +0000

Dallas-area residents Cali Lewis and her producer/husband Neal Campbell spoke to attendees of WordCamp Dallas last Saturday, telling them of their struggles and dreams launching GeekBrief.tv, how they use WordPress to administer several blogs and their plans for their upcoming Big Trip.

My takeaway from this session is twofold: Neal spoke about his “laser-like” determination to make their dreams into reality, and Cali, at one point, told the audience at some point you have to, “just do it!” In the coming months, I intend to take their lessons to heart.

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cali Lewis, GeekBrief.tv, Neal Campbell, WordCamp, wordcampdallas

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John Pozadzides: 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog (Woopra Launch)

zaphod — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:00:27 +0000

WordCamp Dallas‘ 2nd session came from John Pozadzides, who gave the session entitled 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog. (Despite anything you may hear on the video, I later ruled that, because John spent extra time answering questions from the audience, that he actually was successful in presenting all 45 tips within 45 minutes.)

Toward the end, John previews Woopra, an amazing stats program. Here’s a special deal for listeners of The WordPress Podcast (or, at the very least, people who read this blog): There are currently 8 reviews for The WordPress Podcast on the iTunes Music Store Podcast Directory. I’ll be picking 7 reviews added to the 8 that exist already that I find creative and awarding Woopra invite codes accordingly.

Change in plans!

The first 7 people who link to this post will receive a free Woopra invite.

© zaphod for The WordPress Podcast, 2008. | Permalink | 20 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: John Pozadzides, Woopra, WordCamp, wordcampdallas

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