Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

The WordPress Support forums are a great source of information, but to not always dig deep. This is where WPQuestions comes in handy. A lot of the questions involve getting down and dirty in code – somethings involve stealthy PHP ninjas.

For those who just need a little coding help, but do not want to go all out and pay a lot of money to a freelancing site, this works great. Response time is great too. I actually asked a question recently and within minutes I had a response. I even had been personally helped by Oleg Butuzov (@butuzov) to work out a code I have been wanting to work with involving adding Adsense. All of the available tutorials had not been working correctly, so I turned to WPQuestions. Thanks Oleg for your help!

Here were a few questions that have been solved in the past:

• Latest Activity in a category
• Javascript enqueue – Avoid javascript conflicts
• How do I bulk import about 1,000 images?

WPQuestions was started by Lawrence Krubner and Darren Hoyt.

Please note that if you do use the service to please set an adequate price. Some of the more difficult answers do take time. I have seen a few answers not give the amount that should have been given for an answer.

One of the great aspects is that if there are several people that answer a questions and they all add to the solution, then the person asking can split up the prize money and award it to all of the people who answered. However, please note, that even if you answered a question correctly after another person, does not necessarily mean you will be awarded the money. It really kind of works like freelance boards where you are competing.

So, if you are a person who loves coding, WordPress, and can answer those brain picking questions, perhaps you might be suited to become an expert too?

I am not a Thesis user. I have designed for Thesis, but I have no love of it. Frankly, it bites. I wrote about Thesis before, and even though I offer a free and simple skin, I still have no love for it.

Thesis does not enhance SEO in any way. In fact, here is what Matt Mullenweg retweeted from @studionashvegas on Twitter.

The whole shebang started before the above Twitter re-tweet between Matt Mullenweg and Chris Pearson, and it spurred on a lot of conversation.

WordPress allows people to alter its code, fork off the code, develop plugins, develop themes, redistribute it, and more. That is how open source is so great. WordPress allows for people who are web designers and developers to take something and improve upon it. However, they (WordPress / Automattic) have been steadfast in not supporting WordPress related software that does not also allow much in the favor of open source and GPL.

Thesis allows people to download the product for an enormous fee. In fact it is nearly $30 more for a single licensing fee than some of the top premium and more pleasing themes out there in the WordPress theme market. The majority of people that use Thesis really are not that different from each other aesthetically in design. This is not some megalomaniac type statement. Look around, it is so obvious. It really is a shame when the product needs more flexibility rather than revamping tidbits of code and offering developers an expensive price that offers VERY little other than multiple installs.

Why bother when the WordPress default TwentyTen theme has so much more potential to be customized and even looks better than Thesis.

For designers and developers who have been in the field of freelancing or offering free themes, Thesis is not something to embrace as a nice product. It is like the annoying premium plugins that end up being a pain to customize. You have to learn their product because they decided to not go with WordPress and tinker with making a ridiculous amount of coding to make hooks that really are not even necessary. They still end up doing the same thing as putting functions and filters in your theme and your theme’s functions.php file.

There are people using Thesis that still have to use gobs of plugins. Do yourself a favor and shop wisely for a WordPress theme if you are going to buy premium themes. Many of them not only offer as many options as Thesis, but go above and beyond in design.

It is a product that works and a lot of people have embraced it, but really, how many hard core WordPress designer and developers would loyally use it, let alone recommend it? Not many that I have seen, especially with the amount of freelance work I get just fixing code on work by other web designers, including a few Thesis related projects. And by the way, I do not see many of those type of projects listed on the freelance boards.

Legality:

I go back to my point I said earlier about Thesis still using WordPress to execute its functions and even though there is a huge argument over GPL, I am not in total agreeance with Why the GPL does not apply to premium WordPress themes. The Thesis product is a derivative much like most WordPress themes, according to Mark Jaquith. It is like if I make my own theme, write a bunch of unique hooks, but those hooks actually operate off of the WordPress core. It is a roundabout way of operating a site. The core is not hacked or altered in any manner.

To learn more about GPL, here are a few resources:

• About GPL and WordPress
• GNU Project

What are your thoughts?

You heard it! And this is not a singular incident. Even Growmap published Akismet Deletes Comments Bloggers NEVER SEE!

While a lot of people do know, others do not know that Askimet will block IP addresses that have been reported to be used by spammers. This is a problem, especially if those addresses are dynamic IP, most commonly found with broadband users. So, if you happen to get the “lucky” IP, you might have your comment eaten by the spam elves at Askimet.

Your WordPress installation allows you to blacklist a lot of things from keywords to websites, and even IP addresses. I would say to eliminate less of a chance of being spam or accidentally blocking your regular comment buddies (example: if they were to change providers in the future), do not include IP addresses to blacklist.

If your comments are being caught as spam, you could use the Askimet contact form, but as to how they will respond, I cannot guarantee that you will get a positive response.

For myself, I have not had a problem with my comments. However, I see people complaining daily about their comments being eaten. It could be Askimet. It might even be the server itself going through a brief glitch. However, there are enough people that are pointing this out and losing confidence in Askimet.

While I am not bashing on Askimet (because I am going to keep using it for my own websites), I have to put the question out there if some algorithms and settings needs to be looked at before spammers get worse in the years to come. Perhaps leaving the IP banning should be up to the individual site owner? Most web hosts do allow site owners to implement IP banning… some make it easier. For example, web hosts that offer clients cPanel have a special section in the administrator panel for IP banning.

What are your thoughts?

So, the biggest question I get a lot is if WordPress 3.0 will totally mess a person’s site up. After beta testing it on my own server, I can say no.

HOWEVER…

…for those who still are worried, I turned to Andrea Rennick (@andrea_r on Twitter) during WordCamp Chicago 2010 to ask her the same thing and guess what – my own answer was confirmed.

Now, it is the plugins that might be in question, so if you are not sure, ask the plugin developer if they are still actively updating their project. Of course, please be nice about it and do not expect an answer right away. Plugin developers actually do have lives outside of coding (oops – that might have been a little violation of code sacrilege.) Although I would hope most developers would install a beta version of 3.0 to test their plugin, that does not always happen.

Of course, if you are not sure, make sure to check out the WordPress Codex and compare the WordPress functions and filters, and even the loop to what you have.

I almost think this is like the Y2K of WordPress upgrades… but I am not worried – hence, you should not be worried either. Lots of great features in WordPress 3.0. I will be writing up a post soon on it since WordPress RC3 (release candidate 3) is out.

What worries do you have about WordPress 3.0?

Lately I have been seeing a lot of talk about frameworks. Rather than go into it right away, I just thought it might be fun to have a poll here at WP Addict about what people use as a framework.

You can leave a comment if you want, but it is not necessary. And the plugin used for the poll is WP-Polls by Lester Chan

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Since 2.9′s release a lot of users have been complaining that they were unable to use the scheduled posts feature. While you could schedule the post, it would not publish at the time you wanted. In fact, you would have to go in and adjust manually publish.

Other problems that have been addressed can be found at the WordPress trac. Please note that if you are having actual upgrade issues to be specific about your problem or it will be difficult to resolve. If it is just plugin issues, either contact the plugin creator, or go to the WordPress Support Forums and post a new topic. Please note, some plugin creators may not provide support or request you to join their own forum.

The update should be available as an automatic download or for those still having trouble, you can download and manually upgrade your WordPress installation.

WordPress 2.9, also named Carmen, was announced on the WordPress development blog in their post, WordPress 2.9, oh so fine for anyone to download. Of couse, those who can automatically upgrade, you should be able to see the notice in your WordPress administration panel and be able to upgrade from there.

Some of the great features introduce were:
- Ability to mass upgrade plugins
- Post/ File Restoration for accidental deletions
- Built-in image editor
- Easier ability to embed videos
- Upgrading TinyMCE and SinglePie
- Support for canonical URLs
- Ability to register post thumbnails
- Improvement of PressThis
- Theme Editor Improvements
- Hooks and Filter improvements

In fact, there were quite a few mentioned at the development blog. Of course, this makes 1 step closer to merging WordPress and WordPressMU, which were hinted about earlier this year.

As a longtime user of WordPress, I have seen how WordPress has migrated from a blog platform to a Content Management System (CMS). These days I hear,

“Oh, WordPress the blog script?”
“WordPress is not a CMS.”
“Can I -INSERT QUESTION- with WordPress?”
“I’ve heard about WordPress, but I’m not sure if I want to use it. I just want a website without the blog.”
“I heard WordPress is hard to learn.”

My response:

WordPress is a CMS. It is no longer just a blog platform. There are features that make it flexible enough to turn a WordPress site into a forum, a social bookmark site, a social network, an e-commerce site, and more. The beauty of WordPress is that you do not have to have a blog for your website. You can choose to harness that feature, but you can have a site of just pages. There are plugins built for WordPress that literally transform websites from ordinary to extraordinary.

Using WordPress is easy. I know it is because I have taught people in their 60s how to use WordPress. It does take a little time to learn, regardless if you want to be a WordPress.org self-hosted user or a WordPress.com hostee. You do NOT have to necessarily know HTML or PHP if you are using a free template or have someone design one for your site. It is as easy as typing an email.

WordPress won a CMS award at the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. This is pretty significant news and confirms the status of WordPress in the CMS World when pitted against CMS giants like Drupal and Joomla.

So, what do you think? Has WordPress made you think of it as a CMS or do you think of it as just a blog platform?